Axel Browne died twice before his sixty-third birthday: once from a bullet wound during the war and a second time from hypothermia.  The first event should not have taken his life but did, while both deaths might have been avoided if not for human misjudgment.  Yet, Axel Browne survived both of his premature endings.  It would be fair to ask How?

It is somewhere written that if we die before our appointed day, Heaven grants us the choice whether to return and continue our desperate lives here on Earth or move on to more beautiful and fascinating pursuits in the celestial realm.  If this is true, then Axel Browne was either a glutton for punishment or he must have had some compelling reason for living.  Because for the majority of his life he was a wanderer who sought neither career nor home.  Yet both times he had the opportunity to cash in his difficult existence for a better one, he chose to stay.

Whatever it was Axel Browne lived for he needed it more than Heaven.

Copyright by Dale Tucker.  All rights reserved.