Pondering Death and Life

This weekend will be a busy one. It's Memorial Day weekend, and nearly every year, a number of my family members come back to the place where we all "began"- my hometown. There is a lot of visiting, family bonding, eating, drinking (in moderation, of course) and laughter. But we also trek on out to Home Cemetery to honor our family members who have passed on before us. Of course, we aren't the only ones. The cemetery is usually full of people putting out flowers and remembering their own loved ones. (I always feel sorry for the dead folks right next to the McAdams plot. They have been gone for many, many years, and no family comes back to visit them. We always have extra flowers, so I decorate their graves too.)

My mom helping my nephew put flowers on his great, great, great grandfather's grave.

Going to cemeteries has never bothered me. My family has been very interested in genealogy for as long as I can remember. We've ventured to long abandoned cemeteries out in the country where our ancestors from a hundred and fifty years ago are laid to rest. We've even had to take a shovel to dig out their headstones that have fallen and are covered with years of soil and grass.

This is my mom and little 5 year old me digging out our ancestor's tombstones!

While looking at the stories of my ancestors, there is one major common denominator- they all died. It makes me think about death. Not in a moody, melancholic, teenager dressed in all black way, but more in a positive, contemplative way. I've been around "death" for awhile. Like I said, I ran around cemeteries as a little kid. While in high school I worked at a flower shop. I did a lot of arrangements for funerals and delivered them to the funeral home. I sang for quite a few funerals as well. The funeral director knew me very well and could even recognize my voice on the phone without me identifying myself. (That still kind of creeps me out.)

I'm used to death, but I still think it is a strange thing. It isn't natural. It wasn't in God's original plan for us to die. (Thanks again for that one, Adam and Eve!) One second someone is alive, the next- they are gone. But nonetheless, it is a part of our lives, no matter what we do about it.

As young people, we spend so much of our time thinking about what our future will be like and planning for it. What career we'll have, who we'll marry, where we'll live, what our children will be like. We exercise and eat healthy to add years to our life. We don't make funeral plans. Death is far from our minds.

On the other hand, older people, those who have lived long and fulfilling lives, do think about their deaths. They pay for their plot and pick out their own casket and headstone. The grandfather of my best friend was practically on death's door this last winter. It was a very hard time for her because she is very close to him. She didn't want to let him go, and what made it even more difficult for her was that he wanted to die. He had lived a good and fulfilling life. His beloved wife had passed on a couple years before him and he so badly wanted to be with her again. But that is something that is hard to grasp for those of us who are still in the prime of life. We don't want our loved ones to go, because we love them so much and want to be with them.

It is kind of a bittersweet feeling when our loved ones die. It is easy for us to forget that the other side is actually a much better place than here on earth. (I'm talking about heaven, of course.) However, we are sad because we want them with us- body and soul. We want to laugh and cry with them, have a conversation with them, be able to touch them. When that is taken away from us, it is a sad time.

I'd like to think that the funerals my family have reflect that. Of course we are sad. That sadness never really goes away. It's been years since my uncles have passed away, and family get-together's aren't the same. Not a family reunion goes by that I miss them and wish they were with us. However, we always celebrate their life. My family always jokes that we put the "fun" in "funeral." I really do believe that there is more laughter than crying when one of our family members dies. We go through pictures, we remember the good times, and we eat good food. We walk away from the event with an empty hole in our heart, since that loved one is gone, yet our heart is happy. A strange combination, I know.

Death can be beautiful. Knowing that our loved one is in perfect happiness, and someday, if we live right, we can be with them in that perfect happiness should bring us comfort. We cannot fathom what perfect happiness is. Imagine the best feeling you've ever had, the happiest day of your life, the most perfect day- and multiply it by infinity. That is what heaven is like. Our loved ones who have gone before us are experiencing that now. We mourn them? It really should be the other way around- they mourn us, for still being here in a non-perfect existence.

As much as I know that life after death is a good thing, I still fear it. I mostly fear my loved ones being taken away from me suddenly. When I think about my mother or husband passing away... well let's just say I know what I would think of if I were an actress and the script called for me to be a blubbering, sobbing mess.

Sometimes accidents happen. Sometimes they are bizarre. Last fall, there was a man who was driving in Colorado, and a huge boulder fell on his car and killed him. Just think if he had driven just a little faster or slower, that might not have happened. I remember discussing this with a friend and she said, "God was ready for him to come home. I just hope I'm always in a ready state for when God calls me to be with Him."

I still couldn't help but think that it seemed like a pointless tragedy. He was a father with very young children. What about those people who die in car crashes? Or who are accidentally shot in a drive-by shooting? Or happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? I wrestled with these questions for quite a while until I heard Johnette Benkovic speak at a Lenten retreat I went to this past February. She talked about her young soldier son who had just come back from Iraq. If I remember correctly, I believe he had only been home about a week or so when he was tragically killed in a car accident. He had survived living in a territory where thousands of enemy soldiers wanted to kill him, yet when he was "safe" at home, he had died.

This situation is beyond sad, but she said something that really struck me. Even though the accident was tragic, even though she loved her son fiercely, even though she wanted more than anything for him to be alive, she knew God was perfect. His plans for us are perfect. His plan for her son's death was perfect, even though it doesn't seem like it to us. She said God "plucked" her son from this earthly existence at the perfect time. She saw some hints of post traumatic stress disorder when he came home. What if he continued to live on this earth and was haunted every single day by the demons of war? What if he was so depressed he decided to hurt himself? Wouldn't it be better for him to be in perfect happiness with Jesus, than to be beyond miserable on earth, even if it meant Johnette would be able to be with her son?

It made me think about my uncles and grandfather who have passed away. Of course we all prayed for them to be healed and get better. But if God didn't "pluck" them away at the perfect time, would they have suffered more than needed? Would they have been emotionally and phyisically tormented? I think about the three young girls who were killed in a car accident my freshman year of high school. I didn't know the deepest parts of their lives. Perhaps if they would have survived, their lives after the crash would have been miserable. I know these are all "what if's." Like I said, God's original plan for us didn't include death. But through our own sin, and that pesky Satan, we have to deal with it. But God loves us, and makes the bad in our lives good. Jesus Christ has conquered death, so we know that God has made death perfect. We can't wrap our heads around it.

I look forward to this weekend where I can be with my living family and friends, and honor my family that have passed away. But what I look forward to the most, is someday walking through those glorious gates and being welcomed by my family and friends... hopefully after living a long and fulfilling life on earth! I also look forward to "seeing" my future generations come to my gravesite to put out flowers after a fun-filled day of laughter, joy, and simply living.