Grief Pt. 5
How Come Death Is So Hard?
by Nancy Andreson – The Widow’s Mite.Might
I was at a gathering recently where a panel of leaders answered questions. One question put forward from a sincere participant asked the question; “How Come Death Is So Hard?” The dear woman who got this difficult question did her best to answer off-the-cuff. She spoke of how she thought of death in the light of eternity. She spoke of eternity as our comfort and a way of framing the death of one we loved. She avoided the actual question. No one else on the panel offered any input.
Eternity is a true comfort to all of us who lose a loved one in Christ. The act of dying can be very hard and painful if you are stepping into eternity. Yet once you have gone, you are no longer in a difficult place. It is very different if you are the one who has lost that love connection. It’s important to realize there is a difference between hard and comfort. Comfort doesn’t lessen hard. They are two separate realities.
So why is death so hard? My granddaughter and I were having a talk about death one day after her grandfather died. She is 10. She told me in the course of the conversation that she didn’t think she would survive if her older sister ever died. I tenderly asked her why she felt that way. Her response revealed the depth of their love connection. “She is the one person who truly understands me. She knows how to make my fears go away. She lets me get in bed with her if I have a very bad dream. She sticks up for me when people make fun of me. She helps me when I don’t understand things. I am very emotional, and she calms me down when I am out of control. She is my very best friend in the whole world.”
How would you recover from such a loss? How hard would it be? How long would it take?
Her 10-year-old response is both touching and touches on why death is so hard. Death is a thief. An enemy of God’s. Death was not God’s intent. It was a necessary curse in response to our disobedience. One which one day will be swallowed up in life. “For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death.” I Cor. 15:25-26.
In some ways death feels as supernatural as life. It’s overwhelming. One minute the loved one is with us, the next they are gone. They have ceased to be here. They are never coming back. Nothing we can do can change this. How can this be? How can reality have been so altered?
God made us for community. We are birthed into community. We are made in his image. God has never been just one. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Fully integrated, yet individual. Community is integration, it is interdependence. It is the way we thrive. We need the presence of others who love us, who have gifts, strengths, unique nesses, personalities that speak into our lives. People who comfort and challenge us. We need people we can love back. This exchange of love makes us real and it gives life meaning. “No man is an island.” Death, without asking our permission, rips who that person was along with the precious place they occupied in our life from us. They cannot be replaced. The hole is real and it is deep. While our loved one now exists in eternity, a veil separates us. Our life changes as much as theirs. They are now richer, we however while having been made richer by their presence, become poorer by their absence.
This is a reason “Death is so hard.”
Recent Comments