Attending the dying is the greatest privilege I have ever had. Hands down. No questions asked. Spend any amount of time with an n-stage terminal patient and you will gain perspective in spades. You will also be awash in humility as you realize the depth and breadth of life. It spans a lifetime. It is gone in a single heartbeat.
Sometimes I wonder if I am more awed by God as a creator having now two chronic incurable conditions that are mercurial in nature, not easily pinned down, and a mystery in an of themselves. Our bodies are so infinitely complex that even in 2010, we have not a clue as to the whole of them. One of the best physicians I have ever had stressed to me all the time that she was only "practicing" medicine, because so very much of the time her profession is a best guess. She did not have faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, but she did acknowledge a Creator. Looking at the human body, it is hard not to admit an ineffable genius behind its workings...especially all those times when patients simply defy odds, tumors disappear.
Sitting at the side of a dying person, I always think most of our Creator. Watching a chest wall rise and fall, hearing the rattle that voices impending death, I wonder and marvel that God would have ever created me, Myrtle, and that having done so He would continue to love me, given the mess I make of the life He has given me.
Granted, I have not attended the dying since joining the Lutheran confession. I wonder if my thoughts at such a time would now be different.
The last time I was with someone who was about to pass out of this vale of tears, all I could think was that I knew her death was imminent, but the staff did not warn her husband. I wanted so badly to tell him to stay when he went to leave. Such love there was between he and his wife. I know he would have wanted to be with her. But I was too afraid of the wrath of family members if I spoke. What does Myrtle know? I think my decision to remain silent at that moment is one of my top 5 regrets in life.
[Do Lutherans have regrets?]
But back to that day. I know I have written of it before, but it is on my mind again.
I had two funerals that day: a high Catholic mass and a pauper's funeral. It was not the services that struck me so strongly. It was the graves. At the first graveside, there was a tent, masses of gorgeous flower arrangements, padded chairs covered in rich brocade fabric, an ornate gilded casket, a string quartet, and a soft, green cloth covering the mound of dirt. At the second graveside, there was a pine box and a pile of raw earth. No chairs. No flowers. No music. No pretty trappings to ease the fact that at both graves we were there for the same reason. Death.
I thought attending the dying, giving respite to their families and easing the passing of the person with tender care of his/her body, brought all the perspective you can gain from hospice, but those two funerals showed me that no matter what we do the grave is the same. No matter how it looks on the outside, it is still death that fills it.
Death fills it because of our sin. No matter what we do, no matter what we tell ourselves or what trappings we cover ourselves and our lives with, it is still sin.
How incredible then, is it, that Jesus Christ would come and enter this vale of tears, live this life, suffer as we do, and then embrace death that we, ourselves, will never have to taste its sting?
Then Job answered the Lord, and said, "I know that Thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of Thine can be thwarted. 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 'Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask Thee, and do Thou instruct me.' I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees Thee; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes."
~Job 42:1-6
Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!
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