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

On death and dying

John Donne's famous poem splashed across my thoughts all day today. My long-time friend Dennis Krause passed away yesterday and I read about it this morning. He was unwell but lived life fully. In his youth, he was a member of a couple rock and roll bands, most notable to me, the Hallelujah Joy Band. What a champion he was, staying at the same church he joined back in the mid-70s, serving in music, on the sound desk, and just about anywhere he was needed. His wife, the lovely Anne, is now a widow, way too soon. So which Donne poem? The 10th Holy Sonnet, "Death, be not proud." I quote it in full then add my comments below.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Maybe it's that I'm ageing at some new speed, but it seems that more people I know are dying. Last weekend in Kansas City, a group of friends from Shawnee Mission East High School class of 1969 remembered John Rooker, our former Senior Class President or Student Council president or such. Three men's memories stood out-- those given by Rick Daniels, Rick McNeely and his own brother Tom Rooker. Memories of days gone by. We come and go almost too quickly it seems.

Here in Australia a 7-year old boy is being remembered. He died in a horrible manner last Thursday in Barcelona, Spain. He and his mother were walking along Las Ramblas Boulevard, and according to Reuters today, "Julian Cadman was among the 13 people killed when a van driven by a suspected Islamist militant mowed down pedestrians in Barcelona... The boy was separated from his mother who was taken to hospital in a serious condition. Authorities in Australia and Britain had flagged he was missing since Thursday."

I don't know that anyone in Australia knows any other names of the 14 dead in Spain. There's something wrong, or just feels wrong, about the loss of a child. An innocent. Why did the Islamic terrorist feel that killing that boy was right? Why do we feel so badly about Julian Cadman being killed?

Maybe you remember the movie with Liam Neeson, Schindler's List from 1993, the Oscar-winning movie set during the Holocaust, where 6 million Jews and countless others were killed by madmen in uniforms. The scene highlighted in this still photo

makes the killing of millions personal. The girl in the red coat is one of unnamed thousands in the ghetto, gathered, escaping, hiding, caught. For some reason, when she is noted, we continue to watch for her, to care for her, to wonder what will happen to her. And isn't that what love does?

And maybe it's love, or a desire for love, that makes us so upset at the death of Julian Cadman. And the 13 others. It's one thing to note that 6,775 per day die in the US. But I only noticed two this weekend. Jerry Lewis, because the media made great mention of him here, and my friend Dennis. It's when death gets too close that we note it. But death is not the end. So said John Donne. There is eternity, and there is hope. "Death shall be no more." he said, "Death, thou shalt die"

Hosea, the Jewish prophet, wrote this, which no doubt influenced Donne. "Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death? O Death, where are your thorns? O Sheol, where is your sting?" (Chapter 13, verse 14)

Paul the apostle picked up this notion and filled it full with his remarks recorded in 1 Corinthians chapter 15: "When this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. “O death, where is your victory? O death, Where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (verses 54-57)

Donne and Paul and Dennis and I all have the same unwavering hope that those who put their faith in the Son of God, the Jewish Messiah Yeshua (many call him Jesus), will eventually join with the myriads in the company of heaven. It's heaven which is our eternal home, not Barcelona or Sydney or Warsaw. The grave is not our eternal resting spot. Finally John the Revelator wrote this in summary of the end of history as we know it. "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire." (Revelation 20.13-14) "Death, be not proud." We shall live again. And "death, thou shalt die."