Life and Death

It's been a tough seven days for my wife and me. Last Friday, we left for a Labor Day weekend trip to New York City. Towards the end of our trip, we heard from Ashley's parents that her grandmother had passed away.

 

We returned to Nashville, completely exhausted (we did a lot of walking and exploration of the city during the trip). On Monday night, we unpacked our bags, washed some clothes, then repacked, and left for Illinois the next morning. We drove seven hours on Tuesday and another three hours on Wednesday for the funeral services in Iowa.

 

Last night, the family had a memorial service, and it was one of the most touching scenes I have witnessed in a long time. It's hard to comment on something so recent and personal, but in the midst of one woman's family and friends eulogizing her, I noticed that there was a small baby in the group.

 

I don't know why exactly, but that really caught my attention. It seemed profound, I guess.

 

Before my very eyes were both life and death -- the end of one life well lived and the beginning of another yet to be lived. It was both beautiful and tragic, redemptive and still painful. The incredible cycle of life still continues, and at the same time, it was disconcerting to see how fleeting life can be: one moment, we are small children, and the next, we are saying goodbye to this world. I don't mean to sound morbid, life really can seem that short, sometimes.

 

As the innocent child squirmed in her mother's arms, I wanted to explain to the baby how hard life is and that it is sometimes full of pain, that it's hard to make a name for yourself or do what you really love. I wanted to communicate that sometimes things don't make sense or work out as you thought they would; I wanted to emphasize that as you grow a little older, you become fragile again. I wanted to prepare that little baby for all the trials ahead of her and for that inevitable day when death would come knocking at her door.

 

Funerals have a way of sobering our irrational belief that we will live forever. They remind us that we are all walking towards our final days on earth. Like Benjamin Button, we see that regardless of what order in which you age, that ultimately you end up weak and at the mercy of your environment. Ultimately, what matters is not how many years one has lived, but how full of life they were.

 

When we look at the brevity of life, we may find ourselves in good company with Solomon in declaring the whole affair quite "meaningless." If all we have is 70 or 80 years of struggle, pain, and loss, then life is, as a whole, quite futile.

 

On the other hand, it makes us yearn for something more, something beyond the grave.

 

Last night, as we were gathered in that funeral home, singing "Amazing Grace", I knew that while one chapter was ending, another one was beginning -- not just for Ashley's grandma Joan, but for all of us. As that restless baby kept bouncing on a relative's knee, it was not only a reminder of the value of life, but also a herald of new life to come. I was reminded of why I believe in something more, something beyond the confusion and difficulty of my present circumstances. And at that moment, I believed -- with all this pain and hardship -- that life is still good and quite beautiful, that what we experience here is just a shadow of something to come.

 

I hope that you do, too.