Life’s Greatest Mystery is…

In my first blog, I mentioned about my fear of hospitals and more specifically, my fear around death.  I wish I could say I’m no longer afraid of dying, but I’d be partially lying to you…and myself.  That is why I believe that life's greatest mystery is death.

While reminiscing on some of my first childhood memories, I remember how I would sit around and ponder life, death, God, where babies came from, etc.  Just for humor’s sake, I will humiliate myself and let you know my thoughts on these topics.  First: where babies come from.  I thought that when a woman wanted to get pregnant, she would begin to eat fried chicken (including the bones) and spinach for every meal.  The swallowed bones would begin to form into bones that would be the skeleton of the human and the spinach would provide the nutrients.  You know how parents always say, “Eat your vegetables”?  Well, spinach was the token vegetable.  I even wondered at one point why God made men if women were the ones who created, birthed, and raised a child.  But I digress. :) Second: I remember picturing God as a big swirling mass in the sky and becoming confused when I read a picture book about the Christmas story with baby Jesus and his father, Joseph.  I remember pondering the nativity pictures while sitting on the kitchen floor at my childhood home on Paige Street and wondering if God was actually a man since all the nativity pictures showed Jesus’ father as a man (who I later learned was Joseph, not God).  Third: I remember thinking I had the ability to live forever.  I would say to myself, “Whenever my body gets really, really sick and tired, I will just choose to keep breathing.”  I thought people died because they make the choice to stop breathing, and I didn’t want to make that one.  Well, I eventually learned where babies come from…and that God is not a man…but one thing is still a mystery to me: death.

When I was in sixth grade, I remember getting done with something at church and my mom coming up to me saying, “Karen [not person’s real name] is in the chapel and asked if you three kids would come and see her.”  (Brief background: Karen was a lady in our church whose son had died in his early 40’s.  Karen asked my mom if we kids would go to the chapel to see her during her son’s viewing).  Mom assured me, “We’ll just go in for a minute and you can stay right at the door if you want to.”  Being caught up in the rush, I agreed to go see Karen, not knowing exactly what I should be expecting.  Again, I had thought about death as a child, but mostly about how I would avoid dying by continuing to breathe and about what heaven would be like rather than what our bodies looked like after we died.  I walked into the chapel and felt like I had been punched in the stomach with what I saw: an open casket with black and white framed photos resting on it showing the ancestry of this man, a big floral arrangement, and death.  I wanted to bolt, but right at that moment, Karen said, “Go on up and say goodbye to Jim [again, not real name].  It would mean so much to me.”  We walked up and I remember the pain in my stomach moving up towards my throat, then into my eyes, and I just wanted to burst out crying, but not out of sadness.  No, they were tears of utter fear and terror.  Luckily my mom said, “Jim, may you rest in peace,” because I knew if I so much as opened my mouth, I would’ve wailed or screamed or done something terribly embarrassing.  I kept it together until we walked out of the room, but then felt my body shaking and tears streaming.  Is there any way to prepare yourself for the first moment of facing death, even if it is someone you’ve never met?  I’m not talking about the beautifully painted picture of heaven and going home to the Lord, but the side of death that is left here on this earth.  The part we don’t want to talk about.  And in this story, I opted to not talk to anyone about it for several years.  But every night for years, when I closed my eyes, I would see this man – the images and smells haunted me.  He was in my dreams and caused me to wake up in cold sweats every now and then.

I still can’t understand death…no one here on earth can fully understand it.  We don’t even describe death in the same way.  Some people say “s/he died.”  Others say “passed away.”  In the hospital, the medical staff says “expired.”  Some people may say “s/he has joined the Church Triumphant” or “s/he has gone home to be with the Lord.”  Personally, I prefer the word “died.”  I think it captures the finality of it…perhaps this is why I focus so heavily on the earthly side of death.  It is the way I describe death and the way I have witnessed it in my life.

I’m still getting used to death, even being in my residency.  But maybe it’s ok for me to be afraid of death…specifically earth’s side of death.  Perhaps God is ok with me fearing this unknown.  It is part of the mystery of death that I believe God intended at the birth of creation – after all, we are not God or even gods, but humans, and therefore are not able to know all.


Maybe someday I will get to that thin veil between life and death…I will see what’s on the other side…I will have the choice to keep on breathing like I wanted to do as a child or to let go of this earthly life, die, and move into the arms of God.  I hope and imagine that the choice will be pretty simple.