My dad died at the age of 60. I was 35 years old, living by myself, in a house I owned on the other side of the country. His dying taught me so much about life. Or should I say, how death is a part of life.
In his short life, my dad went through suffering with lung cancer, with successful surgery and chemo, while I was in college. He was 42 years old. At the age of 51, he had a heart attack. I’ll never forgot getting that news and how it felt. At that time I was living on the same side of the country as my parents, but still an 8 hour drive away. I had been receiving phone calls in the middle of the night for a couple weeks and when I answered, no one responded. (This was before caller id was a thing) So, when my mother tried to get a hold of me that night by calling me over and over again, I took the phone off the hook. I got a good night’s sleep and went into the office early the next day. About 10am, I got the call.
I had vowed to myself that I would never cry in the office. Just not professional, right? Well, let me tell you, that was blown out of the water. I lost it, and was surprised by my co-workers’ responses. Most of them were men so I guess I didn’t expect much except words of condolence. I didn’t know what to do next. Within a couple hours I got counseling from mentors about how to balance family and work, told where I needed to be, taught how to plan for the time off, and was given flight information in case I needed to get home quickly. Thank God that was not the case and that I got home to be with him later that night.
On that drive home is when it became more clear to me that life is the occasion and death is a change, not an ending. (Rm 8:6) So much so that when he was with hospice 8 years later and I made it home before his passing, my last words to him were, “Eternal peace sounds really good right now.” Wow has that gone through my mind a lot since then!
When the 2020 pandemic started to keep us home more often, I decided that my kids and I were going to concentrate on what we COULD DO, not what we COULDN’T. In other words, live life and roll with the punches. Yes, people were getting sick and dying. We prayed for them, our country, and the world but this was life on earth and, again, the thought of eternal peace did not sound bad. When we got sick, we worried about it then, not before. Easier said than done, for sure, but definitely helped with the change we were all going through.
I have also recently seen a peace that comes with no more suffering with worry or illness through my neighbors, most of who are quite elderly. As I watch estate sales, people moving their parents to memory care facilities, ambulances, and wheelchair ramps being built it struck me that, sadly, I might soon be surrounded by empty houses. But, that will bring the change of new neighbors and that thought makes me smile when I think of possibly hearing and seeing children playing, teens learning to drive, families celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, and on and on.
Recently I watched overwhelming love and support being shown to an NFL player who went into cardiac arrest on the field during a game that millions of people were tuned into. I found myself praying that somehow this helps more people think of death as part of life. A change, not an ending.
I loved how the homilist at Pope Benedict’s Memorial Mass I attended talked about death – as laughter, an image of the Pope’s. “Death is not the end but a divine comedy,” he said. He ended with “because of Jesus …every one of us gets to laugh in the face of death.”
May perpetual light shine upon us. (2 Tm 1:10)