Dealing with Death

I woke up a little after five this morning. I couldn't sleep because I dreamed that a family member died. Truthfully, there are some people that one expects to die more than others, but no matter what death is a hard, cold reminder of what Adam's fall eventually leads into.

When my father died it was a real blow to me. I mourned his death for over a year. Now we're coming upon four years since he died, and I do not quite feel the same about it. My spirit within is resolved about his death, and more so death in general. I was with my father a few minutes before he died. I aided the funerary in moving and releasing the body from Hospice. That may sound alarming, but it was part of my mourning. I remember telling the attendant what my father did during his life. I shared through tears how I fully expected him (and all the funeral home preparers) to respect his body.

I remember that before he died, my mother and I had been sitting in the room with my father for a very long time. My father had not responded for most of that day, but he would look at each of our faces through his thin grey eyes. Death is no pretty business. Hospice even had a pamphlet on the stages of dying. It was very eerie to me. I didn't want my father to die, and I kept talking to my siblings like he might somehow pull out of it. But by the brochures account, he was in the last stages of death. It was just as it said, but just a little too callous to me.

My mother asked me to take her home. She was just worn out. When we got to the car, I remember that she told me things about my father I had never heard, and about his family. I felt like something was going to happen that day, and so did mom. We talked in the car for about thirty minutes. When we got to her house, she poured herself a bowl of soup, and she answered the phone. She dropped it. It was "the call." We turned right around and went back to Hospice.

I kept feeling so sad for my father, wanting so much to be there with him when he died. Mom did too. We didn't want him to die alone. We wanted to be there. My father's sister Jettie later told me that we had probably not even left the building before he breathed his last. It was just after both mom and myself had left his room after telling him goodbye and that we loved him and that we would see him later. We meant later that evening, but I truly think he took it as a final farewell. The day before he had pulled me close to himself and told me all that was in his heart. "I love you very, very much," was all he said.

He died the evening before my 30th birthday. That was the most bitter of birthdays. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could have made it any different. I wondered how I was to ever enjoy my birthday again. In many ways it will never be the same.

Joyce had gotten me two small pine trees for my birthday. I broke off one of the branches and placed it in my fathers hand. He always was more of an outdoorsman and loved Colorado more than any other place. My nephew Bo made his casket of unfinished pine. Dad always wanted to be buried in just a plain pine box. He had said it many times. He thought it was a waste of good money to spend a fortune on a box that would be seen only for a few days and that would in the end be buried with the dead. Also he wanted to be buried like they were buried in the Old West.

I still dream about my father all the time. In my dreams, we will talk as if he had never died. Sometimes we will talk about his death. It is okay with me though. I know that death is something we must all face. I feel like as we grow, we face death a little at a time. I am fine with dying whenever God calls me. I am not afraid because I know that Jesus took death on for me, and He promised me the resurrection. My body may perish, but I will not be dead because I am just a spirit trapped inside this sinful flesh. My death will be my release from sin, and my resurrection will be my gift from God.

Paul said that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and so I'm not worried about my spirit being trapped somehow inside a dead decaying body. The very instant I die, I will be in the spiritual world with my Saviour. The spirit world is all around us, and we will one day see it all plainly with our spiritual eyes. Jesus is all the Life we need both in the body and in the spirit.

All of us will die, and we don't get to pick how that happens. It is the painful reminder that the curse of physical death is still alive in the world. But dealing with death is a choice we are faced with continually. Our mortality stares us in the face on a regular basis until it our time to go. Seeing death is a bitter pill. But more bitter is the soul that never deals with his own mortality at all the opportunities that God gives us in dealing with death.


--Johnie