Life is more precious to me with each passing day. I suspect that this is largely the result of growing older. It seems that more and more people I know are passing away, some of whom I’ve known most of my life, some who aren’t much older than I am. Death became very personal to me when I lost my mother a few years ago, and my dad only months ago. When someone we love dies, life becomes both more and less precious at the same time. But life manages to go on, as time continues its forward march. If we want to live an authentic life, it’s important to think about death from time to time, especially our own. For the key to the question of death is what will unlock for us the door to life.
People often speak of knowing, at least intuitively, that their loved one is “in a better place.” This comforting notion, precisely at the time a person needs to feel it, has been described as “being embraced and held for all time by the phenomenon of unassailable good.” Indeed, our hope is that the place to which our loved ones have gone is not just “better” but the “best” of all places.
Whenever we find ourselves standing face to face with death, life does come into sharper focus. The important things stand out more clearly. We find ourselves, at least for the moment, better able to distinguish between what matters little and what matters most. On the other hand, death deflates life, equalizing everyone and everything. Fame and fortune quickly fade into obscurity. Clothes, cars, and cash count for nothing.
The oldest secret of the mystery of life, death defies precise definition, remaining an unfathomable enigma. Paradoxical in nature, death is gradual yet sudden. At birth, life takes up its eventually bound-to-be-lost battle with death. Life renews itself from time to time, but the outcome is never in doubt. We rarely advert to the presence of death at work in us while we young and healthy, but it is always there. The path from the cradle always leads to the grave.
Nevertheless, death always arrives with an element of shock. Even though we may observe its approach over a period of months or even years, the end always seems to come suddenly. Sometimes, when we remember loved ones who have left us, we can hardly believe that they are gone. No matter how long we keep watch waiting for death’s descent, we are never fully prepared to give up those we love. As long as life is there, we hold on to it dearly, until that last seemingly sudden moment when it is gone.
There is both a certainty and uncertainty that pertains to death. Every one of us has an appointment with death we cannot cancel. We ignore it at our peril. Yet we know neither the day nor the hour. It cannot be marked on a calendar or entered in a datebook. Thus we never know what tomorrow holds. If God wills, we shall live to see another day.
For unbelievers, the ominous qualities of death must be all but overwhelming. For believers, death is still an end, but also a beginning. It puts a period at the end of a human life and marks the termination of familiar things. It is the end of going to work and coming home again, the end of all human endeavor. There is an undeniable, unmistakable note of finality in the moment of death. But for believers, that moment is only the beginning of a life where, according to the Book of Revelation, death will reign no more, sorrow will be turned into joy, and every tear will be wiped away. St. Paul says quite simply that if we believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead, God will bring forth with him from the dead those who have “fallen asleep” believing in him.
A century and a half ago, the American evangelist, D. L. Moody, told people not to believe it when they picked up the newspaper some day and read that he was dead. He insisted that at that moment, he would be more alive than he had ever been before. Perhaps a thousand years before the coming of Christ, Job maintained essentially the same thing. Professing his faith in a living God who would vindicate him, Job intuitively “knew” that though his body might be destroyed, he would get to see God in his own flesh.
Children bring their own unique perspective to death as their slightly askew comments reveal. “When you die, God takes care of you like your mother did when you were alive. Only God doesn’t yell at you all the time.” “When you die, they bury you in the ground and your soul goes to heaven, but your body can’t go to heaven because it’s too crowded up there already.” “Only the good people go to heaven. The other people go where it’s hot all the time like in Florida.” “Doctors help you so you won’t die until you pay their bills.” Out of the mouths of babes.
When we were children, many of us who are older learned a prayer that first helped us to grasp the nature of death. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. But if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” In other words, there is no reason to fear something as natural as eating and drinking. To do so is to deny ourselves the opportunity to die joyfully and peacefully. As Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has pointed out, death need not be a catastrophic, destructive thing. It can be viewed constructively as a positive, creative element of culture and life. Just as the way we live shapes the way we die, so the way we view death will shape the way we live.