| It always seems to be when I'm
least expecting it that something throws a shadow on my entire day. This time,
I think it was more of an eclipse than a shadow. I was at a BBQ joint eating
dinner with a couple friends, when I noticed an older gentleman sitting with
his wife across the aisle. From his discolored skin and hairless head, you
could tell he was going through chemotherapy or something similar, and he
limped badly as he went to his seat. I also noticed that he was carrying a big
zip loc bag with him.
A few minutes later, as I was
walking out of the bathroom, I saw him walking in. He was limping as fast as he
possibly could, and was carrying the zip loc bag, which was now full of throw
up. As I looked at his face, I saw that
he had tossed the despair that one would expect to the back of his mind. His
expression was one of stone cold determination. The first thing I thought of
was his wife who had been sitting with him. I wondered what she was feeling,
and I wondered if her eyes would show the same sternness. My instinct told me
that there was no way they could, and my instinct was right. To find the look
of pain, I had to look no further than the face of the person who loved that
man, but what I saw was so much more complex than pain or despair, and so much
deeper than empathy. And after the initial glance, I saw resilience in her eyes
as well, though it was more hidden than in his. It seemed as though a hundred
emotions were within her and were showing on her face at the same time. Even
though it’s a trite word, the only word to sum what I saw in her was love.
I went to hang out with a few good
friends after dinner, but those 10 seconds were etched in my mind and wouldn’t
leave me alone. It wasn’t just that I felt sorry for them, it was that they are
but a representation of literally millions of people who live a reality like
that every day. It was that death is such a strange thing which refuses to just
come and go, it would rather eat away at us gradually and stick its hands into
every piece of our lives.
When I’m having days like this, it
doesn’t help that I live right next to a Funeral Home. Every time my thoughts
are morose, there seems to be a viewing going on when I get home. The most
gripping times are when I drive by after a viewing has ended, and there are
only 2 or 4 people left, or just one person sitting in their car. They seem to
show such deep emotion, even at a moments glance. These people will not have
forgotten this moment months, years or even decades from now. They are
daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, best friends and unfortunately even mothers
and fathers.
My instinct has always been to feel
the most empathy for these people. But the other day I was thinking about all
of this, and I realized there are a lot of people who will only have that
experience once or twice in their life, if at all. There are many in this world
who only let a few individuals so close that they simply can’t bring themselves
to leave the place where their body lies.
I thought
back to the viewings of people I had been close to, and to the people there.
There were the people who showed up and kept a serious look on their face out
of respect, gave a few cordial handshakes and went on with the rest of their
day. But did they get the better end of the deal? No way. They might have been
spared the grieving process, but they missed out on the privilege of knowing
that person the way that I knew them. So the people who never get to be the
last ones to leave are really missing out in life. They’re missing out on love.
The lucky ones? The lucky ones are the people who are sitting in the parking
lot of a funeral home crying and laughing and telling stories at midnight on a
weekday. The lucky ones are those who feel the emptiness of loss because their
heart was so filled up with love for another human being. This doesn’t make
sickness and death easy to deal with, but it brings it into perspective.
I woke up to my alarm and saw the
sunshine blazing through my window brighter than I had seen it in a while. It
was Easter Sunday, and it was a beautiful day. When I got in my car, I rolled
down all the windows and let the smell of Spring blow through as I was driving
(which was good, because my car happened to smell like crap at the time). It seemed
like the day was full of life, like an Easter Sunday is supposed to feel. As I
pulled out of my house and passed the funeral home as usual, I saw something
incredibly beautiful. In the parking spaces where I always see the lingering
family members, I saw cars pulling into the spaces. The parking lot at the
church down the street was full, so people were using the funeral home as
overflow parking. Right where I’ve come to expect black suits and long faces,
there were 2 girls about 7 years old, wearing the brightest flower dresses.
They were holding hands and skipping towards the church, with smiles from ear
to ear.
At that moment, as I slowed down to
take in the significance, I couldn’t help but see a vision of the Kingdom of God and the new earth right there in the
parking lot of that funeral home. It was a place that was made for mourning, a
place that is necessary because of death and sin, yet these two girls were
dancing on that ground in a spontaneous celebration of life.
This is what the Kingdom of God is all about, taking
what has been devastated by sin and bringing it to life, reclaiming this
tattered world that has brought pain to each one of us, and speaking love,
justice, peace and joy into it. This is what the new earth will look like once
death has been overcome by love, the kind of love I saw in that wife’s face at
the BBQ restaurant. We will be on this same earth that was so dirty from the
atrocities of man, but it will then be filled with peace. We will dance on it,
because it has been restored to what it was always meant to be and our hopes
have now become a reality. It will be like flower dresses at a funeral home on
Easter.
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