Do you remember the first funeral you ever went to?
If you're like most people, it was probably the funeral of one of your grandparents or some other elderly member of your extended family who had died of natural causes. That's the sort of gentle introduction to the topic of death that is one of the benefits of living in wealthy countries in this season of history we're currently in. It allows the child who goes to their grandparent's funeral to learn the lesson that a human body eventually wears out and stops functioning, but it's something that won't happen to the child for a VERY long time and so it's not something that child has to start worrying about right away.
This kind of makes us think we're immortal when we're young, and most of us prefer not to think much about death and dying either right away or later on. Most people don't want to think about their own death/mortality until they are at least getting into later middle age, if not later.
But sometimes, things happen that make it impossible to avoid thinking about death and dying.
Reminders of this unpleasant topic of death and dying have never been absent from my experience for very long. The first funeral I attended was when I was 7 years old and it wasn't for an elderly person but rather for a kid in my school who was just a few years older than me. He and his cousin, who lived in another state and had been visiting with his family, died in an accident involving a recreational vehicle. It made me aware, at a very young age, how fragile life can be. I never had any illusions about being immortal or indestructible. This made me more careful and might have kept me out of some bad situations but I think it's also made it difficult for me to enjoy many things.
I also never attended a funeral of any of my grandparents, because two of them died before I was born and the other two died while living in places far from where I was living at the time and I was unable to go. I always knew what they died OF, however, and the same health problems that they suffered from also affected my parents. My father died fairly young of causes very similar to what caused his father to die at a young age and my mother was in poor health for almost 15 years before she died of COVID, which was unanticipated, but her poor health made her very vulnerable to that disease.
All of this family history has made me very cognizant of the need to keep myself healthy and to avoid making the same poor lifestyle choices my parents and grandparents made which led to none of them even getting close to the average life expectancy.
Even leaving that aside, it's a rare year that goes by when I don't get the word about someone in my circle of friends, family, and acquaintances dying. In the past year and a half I've been to five funerals here in Israel and there were three others which I would have liked to go to but I was unable to make it. Most of them, including a cousin who lived in Ashdod and a man I worked with when I lived in Ariel and whose family I was very good friends with, died of natural causes in their later years. But a couple of them were people around my own age or even much younger, including two who were killed while fighting in this war.
All of this is very sad for me of course, but the fact is, none of these deaths made me think much about my own mortality because they all happened to people whose circumstances were very different from mine.
But then, a few weeks ago, I saw a post on Facebook by a guy I went to high school with announcing the death of one of our classmates, a guy I hadn't seen in almost 30 years. He was the same age as me and I can remember the very first time I met him, on the first day of 7th grade. Later, in the 9th grade, we were on the JV football team together and I can also remember him being in a few classes with me.
I found his obituary on the website of the local paper in our hometown, and reading it made me think about my mortality a lot, but not just because he was my age (which is not that old) but because his obituary was so incredibly pathetic. The first third of it was about all the complications in his birth and how he'd had to be in an incubator for the first few weeks of his life. Then it talked about his participation in Little League baseball and a few other sports. He went to college in another state but came home after one year and never went back to college. His obit actually listed a few part-time jobs he'd held for a while and also talked about his hobbies. He never got married, never had a real job for very long and, tellingly, the obit said nothing about how he died. I later found out from another guy we were in school with together that he'd died of a drug overdose which might have been intentional.
It was in the course of talking with him and a few other old friends that I found out about several other people we'd been in school with who met a similar end. I'd heard about two of them but I had no idea how many more there had been.
It all got me thinking about not only my own mortality but mortality in general.
Then a few days after all this happened, my eldest son had a birthday and a bunch of his buddies came to our apartment to help him celebrate, as they do every year. As I sat in my living room watching them eating pizza and cake and laughing and joking around together, the thought came into my mind that one or more of them might very well meet a similar end to what my old companion had just met. That was a very unhappy thought and I tried to put it out of my mind, but it wouldn't go away.
One guy I grew up with who died in his early 40s because of self-inflicted health problems (i.e. his obituary actually mentioned that he "struggled with substance abuse") was no surprise to me whatsoever. I met him in kindergarten and he was on a bad trajectory even back then. Others who died young were also in bad shape even in childhood. Some came from broken homes, but others had parents who seemed pretty normative and their siblings turned out okay, so it's not all so easily explained.
If anyone is still reading this, I have drawn a few conclusions and takeaways from all these thoughts I've been having lately about death and dying.
First, it's never too early to start planning and preparing for the death of yourself and the people around you. If you've got people who depend on you financially, get life insurance. It's never too early to get a policy, even if you're in your early 20s when you get married. Go to a lawyer and make a will, and don't avoid talking about it candidly with your spouse, siblings, friends and others who will be affected by your death. I knew a lady whose husband died unexpectedly in his early 40s and as terrible as it was to lose him, it was even worse because they had made no plans at all and he had no life insurance or any other kind of support so she had to borrow money for the funeral and then she lost their apartment and there were all kinds of other problems. Don't let that happen to your family.
Second, it's also never too early to start taking care of your health. Get sufficient sleep, eat healthy, and not too much. Don't smoke or drink excessive amounts of alcohol (men over 40 shouldn't drink at all) and get regular exercise. If you do these things, you'll be doing yourself and your loved ones an enormous favor. It's not just about not dying, it's about the quality of life you'll enjoy for several years before you die. My mother was in poor health for many years before she finally died, and she didn't enjoy it. You probably know someone who had, or is still having, a similar experience. Don't let that happen to you.
Third, I have no idea why some people have such a hard time in life and end up dying young, but I know from first-hand experience that for some people, the problems start in early childhood. So if you see a child in trouble, do whatever you can to help them.
Pray for the children in your family and in your community, especially the children who are friends with your own children, and try as much as you can to include them in life-enhancing activities that you create with your own children. Try to teach children that you have influence with the importance of making good choices and avoiding things that can harm them and/or are more trouble than they're worth.
Fourth, take a moment to think about what your obituary would say if you died today. If you're not happy about what it would probably say, take some time to think about what you have to do to make sure your obituary says something better.
Last but certainly not least, make it a priority to spend time in prayer on a regular basis to cover all this. Pray that God would reveal to you any unfinished business you might have here in this life so you can take care of it in case this mortal life were to end unexpectedly. Do you have someone you need to forgive or someone whose forgiveness you need to seek? Is there anything else God has for you to do that you haven't done yet? Don't wait even one more day to ask Him to reveal it to you so you can sort these things out, because no one is guaranteed tomorrow.
These are the thoughts I have for you this week brothers and sisters. I hope it blessed someone to read this.
No comments:
Post a Comment