Death

I have death on my mind today. No great learning here today, no lectures about the differences in beliefs. No, just the musing of a man who is closer to that moment than he was thirty years ago. 

The reason I have death on my mind today is simple.  It seems to be all around us of late. Personally, I am remembering my wife's sister who passed away two years ago, the death of a long-time parishioner at my old parish, the respective deaths of my father and mother and of course contemplating my own departure.  I also look to the news.  My ancestral home, Brighton Park in Chicago has become infested with gang violence. Her once peaceful streets are now the turf of gangs whose bullets kill innocent children as the lowlifes shed blood amongst each other.  

I think the saddest part of death, at least the part that makes me the saddest is that on that day when I am taking my last breaths here on earth, no one in the world will alter what they are doing because of what is going on with me. That is just how it is for all of us.  With the exception of close family, of which I am bereft, which is another story, everyone in the world will be going about their business without giving a thought that the world is about to lose Michael the Lesser.  I guess the fact that life continues in spite of death is worrisome to me. The fact that in the end no matter how many are around us, we face our departure alone.  This aloneness makes the time of departure scary. During my whole life, I have always had someone to share these singular and often scary moments with me.  My mother took me to the first day of school.  My father held my hand as we approached my grandmother's casket in my first view of death.  My parents both saw me off at the airport when I left to join the monastery, and my father was there to pick me up when this adventure ended.  With death, there is a unique aloneness that affects no other part of life.  When we are born we begin the journey alone and arrive among the smiling faces of our kind.  With the journey of death, we begin the journey quite alone. 

Does death scare me?  The answer to that is both yes and no.  I am afraid of this step into the unknown.  I also have learned to trust in Jesus and it is this trust  and His love that I am depending upon to smooth the transition from a carbon-based creature to a creature of pure spirit. 

What will it be like to be a creature of pure spirit?  I can imagine that the experience will be amazing.  I cannot imagine what heaven will be like.  I do know that I will want to look up a few of the saints that have helped me over the years.  I would love to speak to St. Michael the Archangel, St. Joseph, and of course St. Francis of Assisi. I believe that that the new world will be a world of great wonder and much happiness.   

Of death, I will leave it at this.  At my wife's sisters funeral, a priest told the assembled mourners that when Marion was born, she was crying and others were laughing.  On the day she died, Marion was laughing and we left on earth were crying.  I think that this is a good way to look at it, don't you?