Not morbid, but real: Death is on its way

There was a season when I would stop and visit cemeteries. It seemed like I found a new one (to me) and wandered through rows and rows almost weekly. That was about 7 years ago. Many Jewish people I knew and others I didn't know were passing away and I had to process that. My ambling through Jewish or Presbyterian sections, mausolea and plain graves, with or without rocks... it didn't matter; I had to visit.

What I was looking for wasn't exactly clear to me then. Nor is it clear to me now. But again this week, this notion of the end splashed up on me. I don't know any of the 250,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19 this year. But death has hit me this week.

My first cousin, Janet passed away the other day. She was 70 and had her time extended again and again. She had a crippling disease, dystonia, which had its way with her for decades. She died peacefully at the Jewish home. That was a few days ago. Then my sister notified me that another man from our synagogue youth group (long since a fleeting memory) named Larry died as well. He died having suffered from muscular dystrophy. This afternoon a pastor friend in Sydney let me know of another pastor we knew named Jason who died of a heart attack on Wednesday, and the splashing around me is becoming ceaseless. 

American comedians, George Burns and Red Skelton, used to say something about rising and reading, but I found out that neither of them coined the saying originally. "I wake up in the morning and read the obituaries. If I don't see my name there, I know it's going to be a good day."  (See below the line) I graduated high school over 50 years ago and all too often our classmates will send a note around about the passing of yet another one of us. 

So death is all around us. And death is on its way to each of us. That's the fact, Jack. 

I cannot find the quote's author, but one American comedian was asked, "What do you want people to be saying of you in 50 years?" His reply: "He looks good for his age!"

But I titled this, "not morbid." And I mean that. I'm using morbid as a colloquial term, not the medical professional one. Let me explain. Morbidity is any physical or psychological state considered to be outside the realm of normal well-being. The term is often used to describe illness, impairment, or degradation of health.But 'morbid' according to Merriam-Webster is "abnormally susceptible to or characterized by gloomy or unwholesome feelings, even grisly or gruesome." Synonyms (a whole list is below the line) include sepulchral and gloomy, even dismal. 

That's what I meant when I titled this. Death is not supposed to be gloom and doom. Yes, being aware of our impermanence could give some pause or anxiety. I get that. And when I ponder the 'taken too soon' of life of young people, like the four kids in Sydney's west earlier this year (See Abdullah family), my heart breaks. For the parents. For the siblings. For the community. 

When I say, "death is part of life," I don't want to be callous. I agree with thanatologists but not with nihilists. I agree with psychologists who want to help people process the fear of death, but not with those who incessantly dwell on it or deny it with vigor. 

When I was seven years old, my grandfather (zayde: Yiddish for grandfather) died. He was my dad's dad, and since I was the third of our three kids, and the usual time of our visit to see him was among many other cousins, I didn't have a very close relationship with Zayde. I remember that April morning when my dad received the phone call. They told me Zayde had died, and I just sat there in the lounge room. "Are you ok?" one of my parents asked. I replied something like, "Everyone dies. I'm ok." 

That wasn't callous, but maybe a bit cavalier. I took it in stride, in a way. Death is part of life. And for whatever reason, I already knew that. My brother had lost a dog when I was younger. But probably it was more of a dismissal of the feeling of loss. What can a 7-year-old boy in 1959 'feel' anyway?

In March, 2014, I was flying from Dublin, Ireland to Newark, New Jersey. It was the roughest airplane ride I had ever had (before or since!). No real rest on the plane due to the turbulence which lasted interminably, and on arrival at the airport, I received a phone call from my sister that our brother, Michael, had died while I was in the air. I was beside myself, and went into and through immigration control, and found myself outside the airport having forgotten to collect my baggage. I rang United Airlines and they helped reroute me and to reroute my luggage which flew separately. Death, although part of life, distressed me that day. 

I really felt sadness. I felt gloom. This was a day when Emily Dickenson informed me more than the Bible. My brother and I had rekindled our relationship only 9 months earlier, after decades of separation. I had no pigeon-hole into which to place those feelings that day. But over time, after the shiva and my returning to work, my life returned to normal, and my feelings of loss took more of a backseat. 

Of course, my own parents are gone. Mom in 2004 and Dad only 10 months later in 2005. I still have dreams where one or both of them show up. And the loss is real, although much fainter. 

Now it's Janet who will linger in my mind for these days. I couldn't get back to Kansas City to be with her sister and my sister and our friends for the funeral due to COVID realities. Janet has three grandchildren who live across the country whom I've never met. I could barely focus for a day or two. I imagine it's a part of my life that more regularly I will hear and be impacted by the realities of someone close or at least known to me, will die. Burns and Skelton are probably right. I need to read the obits and see if my own name is there.

But my hope is not living until I'm 120. My hope is not that everyone I know will last into my last days. I do have hope, and it is about life beyond the grave, but it's not about lingering in a home for oldies. My hope is in God and what He has announced about life and death and eternity. My hope is fixed on the One who came and preached, walked on water and fed 5,000 with a few fish and loaves. My hope is settled due to One who died on a Roman cross and was buried, then burst out of that grave on the 3rd day and after six weeks ascended into heaven in full view of some of his followers. 

My hope is set. My hope is in the Hope of Israel, the Messiah Himself, Yeshua. 

He even said, "I am the resurrection and the life." And by His rising from the dead and His establishing relationship with each of us, He extends His life to us one-by-one. I'm a recipient of that life. I'm a grateful man. 

Death is on its way. This is not morbid, but real. After you die, where will you spend eternity? Write to me if you want to discuss this. Or if you just want to talk about loss for a while. I really do get it. And I'm glad to be someone in your world who will listen as you grieve. Literally, we are all in this together. 

Death, be not proud... Death, thou shalt die. (The whole sonnet is here ). Thanks, John Donne. 

Oh death, where is your sting? (Hosea, the Jewish prophet as recorded in Hos.13.14)

Oh death, where is your victory? (Rabbi Saul, quoted in 1 Corinthians 15.54-55)

Thanks, G. Handel for memorializing those verses into Messiah, your amazing oratorio. 

This blog may have helped me in a cathartic way more than anyone else. And for now, I'm going to keep sitting in the feeling of loss, and let its ways motivate me as I memorialize some of my good times with my cousin and the pastor from Weston who passed on Wednesday. 

Moses wrote in Psalm 90, "As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away...So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom." (90.10-12) I want to make the most of what I have left. Not with worry or compensatory speed. I want to spend time with my grandsons. I want to finish the book I'm writing.  I want to make sure that my t's are crossed and my i's are dotted. 

"Teach us to number our days" means to me that I should make the most of each day. I hope for you the same.

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“When I get up in the morning I read the obituaries. if I don’t see my name there, I go to the office” was said by Bill Comte, a building contractor, in 1962. In 1967, the line was credited to the late British actor A. E. Matthews (1869-1960), who supposedly said it on his 89th birthday in 1958. American actor and comedian George Burns (1896-1996) told the line frequently in the 1980s.  

Synonyms of 'morbid' include: black, bleak, cheerless, chill, Cimmerian, cloudy, cold, comfortless, dark, darkening, depressing, depressive, desolate, dire, disconsolate, dismal, dreary, dreich [chiefly Scottish], elegiac (also elegiacal), forlorn, funereal, gloomy, glum, godforsaken, gray (also grey), lonely, lonesome, lugubrious, miserable, morose, murky, plutonian, saturnine, sepulchral, solemn, somber, sullen, sunless, tenebrific, tenebrous, wretched