Forever Safe

On Monday 21st May 2012, Daniel Joshua Scholes left the darkness and the imperfection of this earth and went into the glorious light of seeing God face to face. 

His was not an eighty year marathon, but a sprint that lasted eight years, eight months and five days. The prize is the same, but the earthly pain was much shorter.

His body went through more than most of us will endure in our lifetime, but he never knew the grief of losing a loved one, the pain of loneliness or the disappointment of being let down by those who loved him.

I cannot yet come to grips with the fact he is not here anymore, and never will be again, and that Richard and I cannot care for him any longer, because we had the privilege of doing that from the day he was born until the day he died. My head knows he is in a better place, but my heart still needs to catch up.

A friend sent me this conversation she had with her own kids last week and it has helped me to glimpse what forever might look like:

I was trying to explain the concept of eternity to my kids the other night (like I've got my head round it myself) and asked them to imagine that the 'Complete works of Shakespeare' was our whole time on earth, (no matter how old we are when we leave it) AND our whole time in heaven too. Asked Jackson to turn to the page he thinks he's at right now (as he and Scooby are the same age). He flicked for a bit then eventually chose pg 94 ('Measure for Measure', Act 1, scene 2).


Page 94 out of a 1433 page book.


I was like 'Nuh-ha... Our time here is like a book that goes on FOREVER and the ONLY bit we get to live on earth is this 'C' (In Complete' on the title page) even if we live to be 100!! And all this bit of our story (The comedy of errors) is with Jesus and here (Much ado about nothing) is with Jesus and these pages (The merchant of venice) are with him (As you like it) and we never cry (The taming of the shrew) even if we fall over (All's well that ends well) because he promises (Twelfth night) that we CAN'T be sad about anything anymore (King John) because we're with him (King Henry the 5th)... and there's still loads of the book left, see?'


Madi looked really puzzled then and cried 'We can't cry for Scooby then can we cause he'll be happy to see Jesus! It's just we'll have to be sad for his mum and dad and brothers and baby and all the other people what he knows!'

On Monday 28th May we will have a small private funeral for Daniel where we will lay his small and exhausted body to rest. Then in the afternoon, we will have a huge celebration. It will be the party he never had to celebrate his recovery - instead we will celebrate his life and the amazing eight years we got to spend with him here on earth. It will be at 4:30pm at Fulwood Free Methodist Church in Preston, and everyone is invited to come and join us.

If you have any pictures of Daniel, or have a specific memory of something he did or said, we would be really grateful if you could email them to scoobyscholes@gmail.com so that we can put them together to show many different aspects of his life, whether it's poignant or funny.

Daniel's life on this earth is over, but his story is not. We know that God has more to come.