Dedicated to those who are left behind...
Waiting. Waiting for death. I have been
waiting a lifetime for this moment and now it draws near. I am not in pain,
although it hurts to breathe. So many thoughts fill my head, but I cannot
speak. I never imagined myself lying here. Tubes attached to help me breath,
more tubes drip drugs into my withering body and they muddle my mind. I wish I
could say all that I feel. But it has never been so, why should now be any
different? Why does God give us thoughts and feelings for which mere words are
so very inadequate? Thoughts and feelings that simply cannot be expressed in
any human language...perhaps in the divine, but mortals may never know.
What I feel now rises beyond the limitations
of speech. My life truly has passed before my eyes as they all said it would. I
close my eyes and feel the bright sunshine of my youth; I reach for the sun and
my hands clasp around something wet and cold. I open my eyes to see my regrets
manifest in that cold, wet, grey, clump in my hands. I throw it to the ground
in violent rejection! Why should I feel regret? I have lived the life I have
lived; I have done the things I have done; I have said the things that I said.
They are all a part of me. Who is to say which part is good and which part is
not. I embrace it all.
I long to let go of this withered husk. But
something is holding me back. I wish I knew what. I have said my goodbyes; I
have done and said all I can say to the loved one's who sit anxiously nearby
waiting for me to release these earthly bonds. I long to reach out to them. To
tell them I am at peace and they need not mourn. That instead they should
celebrate my life and the memories we shared. But it would do no good. They
will mourn as mourners do. They will say they are prepared for my death, but
that is nearly never true. Nothing prepares us to experience death, our own or
that of those we love.
Death changes everything. It leaves a hole
that despite every attempt to fill it remains a yawning and gaping chasm. It is
meant to be so, I think. But in the efforts to close the gap, we learn more, do
more, become more than we were. Before death entered our life. Before we knew
of the burning, searing, pain of loss. Why must it be so? I was taught that
through death I would be reborn. I was taught that only when a seed dies could
it become something new. I was taught that death is only the beginning. But can
it be true? After 50 years as a florist, I have seen this cycle repeat countless times. Am I a seed? Will I too fall to the ground to become something anew?
I have said I do not fear death, but am I
really being honest about that? Everyone fears the unknown, why should I be
different. I have met people who claim to be ready for death and they pray for
the end to come. Can it be said that anyone is ever really prepared for death?
The finality is almost beyond understanding. A poet once wrote, "I am
now ready to embrace death, without this withered old apple core, this husk.”
This part of her poetry has stayed with me all these years and I wonder. She
wrote of the of "the pain it must of have cost some dazzling sun to enter the
limited body of Christ,” and it makes me wonder of the pain, the dazzling pain,
it costs each soul to shed the limited body of this life.
My time is here, the die is cast; there is
no turning back now. I long to let go, but there is a part of me left holding
on, wishing it were not true. I pray for the Lord to embrace me in his arms as
I enter eternal life.
