Everyone is Dying

I looked at my wife and just remarked, “everyone is dying.” As a hospital chaplain death is often near so this should strike no one as a surprise. But this past week for whatever reason I have found myself at the doorstep of the dying with an extra sensitive heart. Parents die. Grandparents die. The Lord knows I have seen horrendous things that I could never have prepared for in ministry, but all this has caused me to pause lately and think of those I love.

I often ask my patients amid their suffering about their stories – what chaplains call a “life review” – and am always blown away by the beauty every life brings. Another person has died.[1] In comes the single mom rocking the same sweatpants she wore yesterday because there has not been a single moment to go home to change and reset. Then comes in Uncle Bob who swears up and down he cannot tell me half of their stories – at least not to “Fr. [squints hard to read my badge] Brett” as he chuckles. I am no priest I assure him. Then comes in his wife. She too is wearing what seems like the same outfit she’s had on for days, hair disheveled, and bags under her eyes. She was “resting” because her family demanded it and we all knew that she did not get a minute of rest. The gentleman laid their lifeless.

There were tears and laughs – sometimes indiscernibly as to which were more appropriate. What was clear though was that these were his people. God gave him these people. They weren’t celebrities, dignitaries, or “special” but they were his. His wife provided me the highlights of their 50+ years of marriage and everyone in the room assures me that he was the greatest man in the world. He grew up Catholic before their daughter gave her life to Christ changing the whole family. His daughter I am told went through some “tough stuff” with that “man who is no man at all – a little boy ya-know-I-mean” said Uncle Bob. Their grandchild was born and would be coming to the hospital soon. God was gracious to them – to him. Their theology was underdeveloped and underbaked but with their hearts burst wide open they were thanking Jesus for all the time they had.

I support them as I know how and then leave. Who are my people? Who will line the bed when I’ve breathed my last? Will they lie and tell stories about how I was the greatest man in the world? We all doubt it but hope an ounce of that will occur. We want to be remembered. Like the thief on the cross we’re left begging the Lord to remember us and are encouraged that Jesus promises he will (Luke 23:39-43). I am reminded that amid life’s trials and ugliest of seasons that the beginning of the Heidelberg Catechism Question 1 still speaks life into me:

Q. What is your only comfort in life and death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. 

Everyone is dying. Some weeks that feels more prevalent. But we will all lay in that bed one day for death is the one great equalizer. Russian Orthodox Theologian once noted that death is the “senseless commotion on a globe stuffed with corpses.”[2] Death can feel meaningless but as Christians we die primarily as the children of God for whom the promises have been given. And that is good news.

Everyone is dying. I think about my parents. Maybe I have 20 more years with them. It can always be more or less, that is God’s prerogative. But it is not lost on me that I don’t live with the privilege of ignorance. Life is short and precious. Any of us can die any day. Life is but a vapor (James 4:14). A car accident, cardiac arrest, cancer, and on and on. I see people die or draw near to that final breath more often than most and I thank God for that opportunity and ministry.

Now all this brings me back to a Narnian exchange: that poor boy Diggory and his sick mother. Diggory understandably wants her to be healed. He is scheming to eventually work up the courage to ask Aslan to heal her. Lewis narrates,

“Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared to with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.”[3]

Aslan’s tears are bright and present because he – like Jesus – does care. We pray for healing and often miss that Jesus has brought healing. He also wept at the graveside of his friend. Jesus has dramatically overhauled death’s power. The sting of death is present in the coffin and our misty eyes at the bedside, but it is powerless to stop our future resurrection and present union with Christ. Our tears and our grief are seen. Jesus is with us. The Johannine Apocalypse opens up with these words:

“he laid his right hand on me, saying, Fear not, I am the first and the last, 18 and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17b-18).

My wife is sweet for listening to my stories and sadly indeed everyone is dying. But take heart Christian, Jesus is alive forevermore, and in him we too will live eternally with him – and all God’s people.

[1] For obvious reasons details here are changed such as names, particular relationships, and direct quotes. This story resembles one of a million I have experienced and will continue to as long as the Lord provides opportunity.

[2] O Death, Where is Thy Sting? – Alexander Schmemann, 82-83.

[3] The Magician’s Nephew – C.S. Lewis, 154.