Why will you die?

 ¹⁰ “And you, son of man, say to the house of Israel, Thus have you said: ‘Surely our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we rot away because of them. How then can we live?’ ¹¹ Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways,  for why will you die, O house of Israel? (Ezekiel 33:10-11)

Is it surprising to hear from the Old Testament God, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live".  It turns out this God is all about second chances, not sudden judgment. And this God is not only warning, but pleading with those on the wrong path. "for why will you die, O house of Israel?"

What a strange expression: "why will you die?" Does anyone will to die, rather than "turn back from your evil ways"? Well, yes, there are the addicted, the self-destructive, the ultimately despairing, but do they really choose to die or have they just lost the will to live?

What about those who want to live, but refuse to do what's good for them? Like you who resist taking a vaccine.  You have a policy, and it doesn't include vaccines.

You've suffered the dangers and the relentless infection of the coronavirus for ten months.  You stay clear of families with the slightest association with the CoVid-19 plague, keeping your kids at home, even for the brief weeks when school was face-to-face.  You wear a kerchief when you are in the stores, even though your glasses keep fogging from your warm breath. Sometimes you convince your kids to keep something over their faces when they play indoors with friends. But you will not trust the vaccine. Why will you die?

You try to keep a tight bubble. You stay away from families rumored to be sick with anything, assuming it was Covid-19. On Thanksgiving it was just immediate family, and no one flew or traveled long distances.  You don't go into a church or a restaurant with close quarters. You can't go to the movies. You are always home by 8 p.m. But you fear a shot that could immunize you from the plague "that rots away." Why will you die?

You kept hearing from the President that the vaccine would save us. Then you hear that a flu shot is about 60% effective. You decide that the corona vaccine is not worth it. Then you hear that Pfizer has produced a vaccine that is 94% effective. They were so quick you are wondering if you can trust their work. Now you are balancing the odds of dying against 94% effectiveness. Why will you die?

They say a drowning person, in a panic, will drag a swimmer down, rather than submit to being saved. Is this the kind of panic you feel when you consider getting the vaccine? Are you resisting the one chance you have for health and relief from CoVid anxiety? Are you being cautious or self-righteously stubborn? Are you taking an enormous risk and resisting a small one?  Why will you die?

Bill

Home

 

Circling high in the sky, the big black bird caught my attention each time it could be seen in the gaps of my leafy umbrella, the canopy above my hammock, my refuge in the courtyard behind the house. Urabu. This local version of vulture was everywhere, there were always a few hanging around on the roof of a building down the street, and I remembered how hard my Dad and I laughed the first time we walked by it on the way to school and discovered it was a doctors office. I soon refocused on the task at hand- lying there, swinging slightly in the breeze, trying to decide which one of the mangoes above was the most perfectly ripe before climbing up to have a my delicious and very messy snack, when I was again distracted, this time by the amazing aroma that filled the neighborhood whenever the little corner grocery roasted coffee, which, because the folks in this small Brazilian town liked it fresh, was a frequent treat for the senses. Back to the mangos, but now what was that annoying beeping?

 

The door opened and the Nurse went over to my Father's bed and turned off whatever alarm was sounding, made a few adjustments to the valves and tubing, wrote something down on the clipboard and then turned and saw me in the chair.

 

"Did you get some sleep? I just made a fresh pot of coffee if you're interested."

 

I rubbed my eyes. "You might not believe this, but I just had a dream about drinking coffee when I was a kid in Brazil."

 

"Kids drink coffee in Brazil?"

 

I smiled, remembering my first Cafe con Leche.  "The coffee there is so good even the babies drink it."

 

She laughed. "Well I'm sure our coffee isn't THAT good, but you're welcome to help yourself in the family room across the hall.

 

Dad seemed to have slept through our conversation, but I got a little styrofoam cup for him as well, started to put it on the tray next to the bed, but stood there looking at him for a moment, thinking of how much had changed in just the past few weeks, let alone in those days years ago when his students called him the "Gigante con Bigote," or Bearded Giant, and they would all hang out at the Cafezino bar after class drinking those tiny glasses of half raw sugar half strong espresso and talking fast and loud whether the topic was the latest popular music or applied thermodynamics.  He had survived the colon cancer for 7 years, and done pretty well with the liver carcinoid, but the surgical infection he developed after that last trip to the Mayo Clinic had reduced him physically to a tiny shell of a body, though his mind was still as sharp as ever, at least when the pain allowed.

 

There was another soft  knock at the door, I turned as it opened a crack, and recognized a retired Pastor from his church, who recognized me as well, though he hadn't seen me there in 30 years.

 

"Hello John, is your Father receiving visitors?"

 

As I started to whisper that he was asleep, a faint voice came from behind me.

 

"Yes."

 

I helped my Dad raise the head of the bed up so that he could see who was there, and he seemed delighted to see his old friend. I let them have the two cups of coffee I had just brought to the room and took my time getting myself another.

 

When I returned to the room I could tell that my Father was getting a bit tired, but looked happy to have had the company. His old friend sensed it was time to go, and motioned for me to come over to the bed and join hands in prayer. It was a fine prayer, it returned me to prayers I had heard in church as a child, and I have to admit that as it went on my mind drifted back to one of the many conversations my Father and I had on that last long road trip to Minnesota. As both a highly respected professor of Physics and Astronomy and a Southern Baptist Sunday School teacher, he had taught me early in life that there was no conflict between the two, that the gifts of Grace and Knowledge come from the same God. But of course there were skeptics, of one, or the other.

 

 

"So why," I had asked, "Have you stayed with a fundamentalist church all these years?"

 

He took a while to answer. "When I was in College I thought that what I really wanted to do was be a missionary, but always came back to the fact that God was calling me to be a teacher. By staying with my church, I'm doing both."

 

I realized that the prayer had ended, that his friend had let go of my hand, but that my Farher still held both of ours. He was smiling, gave us each a long look, and said "Now I want to pray."

 

It was a prayer of thanksgiving, of genuine gratitude for the life he had led, for the love of family and friends that he had enjoyed, for the journey of learning, and the satisfaction of teaching. I don't remember exactly what he said, it is in memory more of a bright light of emotion than a scene to be replayed. But I do remember how he ended it. 

 

"Father, I will soon be with you, and I am full of nothing but joy that I will soon be home. It is for those I leave behind that I pray, that in the coming  days they will find in you that joy, that comfort, and that strength that you have given me my whole life long."

 

I walked his friend a ways down the hall, and he remarked that my Father was right about us all needing divine assistance in filling the hole he was leaving, and though unexpected, how like him it was to think of those of us who would soon be grieving. When I got back to the room he was still awake, and I stumbled through an attempt to express my own gratitude for the life he had given me, knowing I could never find words of thanks that would come close to the magnitude of the gift.

 

He smiled, and I knew he appreciated my effort.  "If you really want to help me now, help me go home- from home."

 

He had been in the hospital, this time, for several weeks, and though there had been some improvement of his condition initially, the infection had been persistent, and as even the most optimistic prognosis recognized that recovery was unlikely, and though thankful for all the years that medical care had given him and forgiving that the last surgery had produced what was going to get him in the end, he didn't want to spend his final days in the tangle of tubes, pumps, and monitors. He wanted to go home.

 

I looked at him, and I'm sure he could see the conflict in my eyes. "You know how Mom feels."

 

"I know that she fears she won't be able to live in a house that I died in. When we talk tonight, I need to know that you will be there for both of us through the hospice, and make sure that after I'm gone you help her remember that it is where we lived, not just where I died. I don't want you to try to talk her into anything"

 

I didn't bring it up when she came to the room that evening, it was her turn to spend the night with him, and I don't know what was said between them. When I came back to the room in the morning they were both asleep, and through the crack in the door they looked as peaceful as I could remember ever having seen them. I walked across the hall, and as I reached for the handle the door opened from inside, and I was hit once more by the smell of fresh coffee, and greeted by the angel of mercy that had just made it.

 

'They're both asleep," I said.

 

"I imagine they are exhausted, they were up most of the night. You know, we try to give everyone as much privacy as we can, but all of us on the night shift knew what was going on in that room. There were tears, but laughter too. You are very lucky to have them as parents, and if you'll stop by the nurse's station I have some information that your Mom asked me to put together about home hospice."

 

I mumbled my thanks, got my coffee, went back out to the parking lot, and sat in my truck and cried.

 

It took a couple of days for everyone to sign off on the plan and get things ready at the house, and I can still hear my Father cry out in a joyful whisper  as they brought him out of the hospital "I'm free!"  We had moved the big round dining room table and replaced it with a hospital bed, and in the room where so many meals were shared, so many birthdays celebrated, he was able to share his final days surrounded by family and friends, visiting with them when he could, or listening to the voices of those he loved, and who loved him. I had rigged up a television so that he could watch the live feed from the Shuttle on the NASA channel, hours and hours just looking down on us all from orbit, and it was this view, and the sounds of love and laughter, that he took with him into the light, going home.

John Northrip

hoto by Mike Kenneally on Unsplash

A practical (and slightly irreverent) guide to surviving the loss of a spouse

A practical (and slightly irreverent) guide to surviving the loss of a spouse

By Kathy Deters

Let me share two important disclaimers up front: First, I am not a licensed therapist, trained counselor, estate attorney, financial planner, mortician or any of the other professions that would lend themselves to offering technical advice to those who have just lost a spouse. I am a mother. And a writer. And a young (yes, I’m saying young, though my kids would disagree), widow. These are the things that I wish I had known in the first few weeks after my husband died at the age of 41. Second, I’ve learned enough since his death almost two years ago to fill a book, but in those first few weeks after he died, I had neither the time nor the focus to read a book, and I’m betting if you’re reading this, you don’t either. So I’m boiling it down to the basics.

Number one: Don’t be afraid to shop around for the best deal on burial costs.

If you’re thinking, “Wow, she’s a little crass for talking burial,” then consider me guilty as charged, but at a time when you’re facing what are probably significant and completely unplanned expenses, it’s fair to want to save where you can. Since my husband hadn’t given me any direction about his wishes, I knew the right choice for our family was cremation, which was less expensive than a burial, required less long-term maintenance, and frankly, was the best reflection of his no-frills, no-nonsense personality. Between my rush to handle things quickly and my desire to maintain some amount of dignity, I basically chose the funeral home with the fanciest billboard on the interstate and didn’t dicker over costs. Fortunately a quick-thinking relative asked around and found that because we only needed cremation services, not a full-blown service at the funeral home, it was much less expensive to work directly with the crematorium and cut out the middle man. In short, don’t be ashamed to shop around.

On a related note, I’m glad that we opted to have my husband’s “Celebration of Life” service at our family’s church, rather than at a funeral home, because it is our second home. Having the service led by our pastor, who cared deeply about our family and tailored the service to my husband’s life, was an added bonus. Also, from a logistical standpoint, it offered plenty of room to accommodate those in attendance. The one downside is that to this day, I can’t walk into the sanctuary without thinking of his funeral. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing—it certainly frames my perspective of spirituality—but it is something to consider when choosing a service location.

Number two: Be proactive about getting your financial affairs in order.

Most picture grieving widows sitting next to a window in yoga pants and an oversized gray sweatshirt crying as rain falls outside (okay, I might be stealing that from the episode of “Friends” when Rachel and Ross broke up, but you get the idea.) In fact, most of the first six months after my husband’s death were spent on the phone trying to get our health insurance squared away, or in meetings with financial planners trying to figure out the best way to handle a Roth IRA Rollover. Don’t beat yourself up for wanting to get your financial matters in order quickly. If you have kids, it’s kind of essential.

If you’re one of those organized households where both spouses are equally informed on all financial matters and your important documents are stored together in a fireproof safe, this is a relatively simple task. If you’re like me, however, your spouse’s social security number is tucked away under a pile of dusty DVDs in your entertainment center, you have no idea when your cable bill is due or even who your cable provider is, and your banking password is whatever sports team your late husband wasn’t angry with the week he opened the account combined with some random set of numbers that are, you can only speculate, his high school sweetheart’s birthdate. I genuinely felt like I was hacking into my own husband’s life trying to guess various passwords. My paperwork low point was a missing marriage license, which is how I ended up sitting in a parked car crying on the phone to some poor secretary at the Cole County Clerk’s office. 

Anyway, as disorganized as you might be feeling right now, I’m telling you I was much, much worse, and somehow managed to pull it all back together. Here are a few financial issues to consider as soon as possible:

-Contact your spouse’s employer immediately, particularly if your spouse’s life insurance was through his or her employer or your family is on your spouse’s health insurance plan. 

-Start gathering up important paperwork, which will include your spouse’s social security number, your children’s birth certificates, your spouse’s death certificate (this one might take a few weeks after his or her date of death), your health insurance card, numbers for your banking accounts, and your previous year’s taxes. As you gather the documents, keep them in a binder that you can carry with you to appointments.

-Surviving spouses and children are often eligible for benefits through social security. Visit your nearest social security office (yes, in person) to determine your family’s eligibility, and lug that binder of paperwork with you.

-Figure out what bills are due and when, and how they’re paid (autodraft, sending a check in the mail, etc.) I concede, I wasn’t as involved in this part of managing our household as I should have been. Hindsight is 20/20. Also, look at any expenditures related to your spouse that are no longer relevant, such as his or her auto insurance, gym fees, cell phone, etc. A tiny part of my heart broke every time I cancelled some service that my husband used. Another part of me was thinking, “Seriously, he signed up for six premium sports cable packages without telling me?” There are plenty of good ways to be sentimental. Wasting money on services you no longer need isn’t one of them.

Number three: Don’t be in a rush to make major decisions.

Yes, there are some things that have to be addressed immediately, but other major life decisions can, and probably should, wait until you’ve had a chance to come out of the fog. My knee-jerk reaction was to sell my home; though financial considerations were an issue, my bigger motivation was that there were too many memories lingering, and not all were good. I also considered retreating to the comfort and familiarity of my hometown. I took a step back, however, and realized that my house and our community afforded my children a feeling of consistency and stability at a time when they desperately needed it. Also, from a more practical standpoint, after addressing all the paperwork I just described in step two, I just wasn’t in the mood for more.

In the first few months after my husband passed away, I also found myself facing questions from those trying to help me with my finances like where my children planned to go to college, where and how I wanted to retire, and “what excited me about my future.” The answers were, “Hell if I know,” “When, if and how I can afford to,” and “Not a damn thing.” For the most part, nearly two years later, most of those answers are still the same, but at least I have the courage now to admit it, rather than trying to fake a response. In short, address those matters that need your immediate attention in order to keep a roof over your head and food on your table. Everything else can be put on hold.

Number four: Let others help you.

Accepting help was difficult for me. At a time when women in our country are fighting for equal pay, positions of leadership and, well, basic respect and dignity, I wanted my children to view me as capable, strong and self-reliant. You can’t turn on the news or pick up a paper without seeing a story about a single mom who managed to put six kids through Harvard while training for a marathon and launching a Fortune 500 company and writing a New York Times best seller. Meanwhile, I needed help figuring out how to change my furnace filter. But more than that there was, and continues to be, a basic fear that if I accept help, I will become dependent upon it—and the only person I can count on to be around for the entire length of my life is me. It’s a harsh reality I discovered when I lost the person I counted on the most. Instead of accepting the countless offers of assistance, I fell into a Rosie the Riveter mindset after losing my husband: I can juggle my same workload while adjusting to becoming a single mother literally overnight while navigating a lengthy and cumbersome financial and legal process while also grieving the loss of my soulmate. WRONG.

My three grieving children, who now needed more attention than ever, suddenly had fewer parents to provide it. At work, I struggled to focus, as deadlines and decisions competed for my attention with feelings of anger, frustration, powerlessness and, at times, hopelessness. I was overwhelmed by financial decisions that far outweighed my knowledge. In short, I was drowning. I needed help. And more than that, my kids needed me to be willing to take it.

Grief counseling groups offered by schools and churches are a great start. For my children, who have become the epitome of the new “resilience” trend that’s gaining traction, having a few minutes each week to be able to talk with other kids coping with the same feelings meant the difference between being just “okay” and being pretty darned good. Support came in less conventional forms, as well, but always at a time when we needed it most. For anyone who happens to be reading this in an effort to support a grieving loved one, here’s a piece of advice: Worry less about what to say, and more about what you can do. God has gifted most of us with some unique skill, talent or expertise that can be put to good use, even if it might not always be immediately apparent. A relative who had worked for the Department of Revenue drove me to the DMV and helped me fill out paperwork to update the title on my cars. Another relative who is gifted with a green thumb took home the hydrangeas that I had sent for the “Celebration of Life” service and carefully tended to them for months, then transplanted them in my garden. Of course there was also the aforementioned uncle who wasn’t scared to dicker over cremation costs on my behalf, and helped me navigate tons of other financial decisions; the neighbor who baked some form of cookie bar that was worthy of an afternoon tea with the Queen of England; my husband’s former co-worker, who gave up Father’s Day with his own family to take my son to see WWE Money in the Bank when it came to town; the friend who, like a protective mama bird, flew across the country to prepare a home-cooked Persian meal for me; and countless other guardian angels who appeared in our lives at just the right time.

Number five: Be kind to yourself.

Note that being kind to yourself is not necessarily the same as taking care of yourself, though for some, the two might not be mutually exclusive. “Taking care of yourself,” to me, means drinking lots of water, running 6 miles a day, eating leafy greens and doing yoga.“Being kind to myself” meant binge-watching “Bachelor in Paradise,” wearing bright red lipstick and eating Nutella straight from the jar. Even on my worst days, knowing that I still cried less than Ashley I. on “Bachelor in Paradise” made me feel a bit better, and as for the red lipstick, as my fashion-forward teenage daughter told me, “When you look put together on the outside, you feel put together on the inside.” Being kind to yourself means indulging in those things that bring you comfort (within reason—maybe keep those mojitos to a minimum), setting more reasonable expectations for yourself, and forgiving yourself for those mistakes that you are sure to make as you stumble along an unfamiliar, and oftentimes rocky, new path.

Number six: Know that you will be happy again.

The piece of advice that I received most often from others who were grieving was that the sadness and despair would never completely disappear. It’s odd advice to give to someone who is basically drowning in sadness and despair, and really can’t imagine life any other way. I would smile and nod politely, but a small voice in the back of my head was always saying, “Um, no doi!” (I’m a product of the ‘80s, in case you were wondering.) They had the best intentions, of course, but in my opinion, this advice might be better suited to those who are in the role of giving comfort and support to the grieving; there comes a time in the grief process when others expect you to be back to your old self, and find it peculiar when you still cry every time an Ed Sheeran song comes on the radio (lordy that man has recorded a lot of songs, and, like, 97.8 percent of them are tear jerkers.)

So yes, okay, I concede, I’m still heartbroken almost two years later, and I can only assume that if I live to be 100, I will be until my dying breath. But you know what else? I’m also often happy. I laugh. My guilt and regret are dwindling. My anxieties are subsiding. I can raise my children, hold a job and be a (mostly) law-abiding member of society. I can be a good friend, obsess over Adam Levine’s new haircut and make jokes about Nutella and “Bachelor in Paradise.” And maybe, every now and then, I can even offer a few words of comfort to others who are facing similar heartbreak. As I told my son, “I believe that we will see Dad again, one day. And when we do, we need to have lived lives full of adventure, with plenty of tales to tell.” 

KD

For information on Grief Share at St. Mark Presbyterian, click here.