Quietus
I once heard of a man who had cancer and was given only a short time to live. His family didn’t talk about it. Even he didn’t know what to say. No one acknowledged the truth out loud.
Humor at an unexpected time
Then one day the man’s elderly father came to visit. His Dad had always been a forthright person and now that trait was magnified by his old age. As he walked in the door he looked at his son and said, “So, I hear you’re on the way out.”
For a brief moment, everyone stared in shocked silence, then they all laughed. It was like a secret door had swung open. The old man’s brazen statement freed them all to openly express their feelings.
Death is a subject many of us want to avoid. We hold our feelings inside thinking they are too private to share. Or we take it on ourselves to protect our loved ones from it.
I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. Death is a subject we don’t need to dwell on. It doesn’t need to be the main subject of every talk. In fact, it shouldn’t. The life we have left should be celebrated. We need to keep our focus on living.
Still, there are moments when it needs to be discussed.
Death-by-leukemia TV shows
I’ve noticed lately how a lot of TV shows are killing off their fictional characters with leukemia. What’s that all about? What happened to good old tried-and-true gunfights? Or getting flattened by a bus?
Anyway, one day we were watching one of those death-by-leukemia shows. Afterwards, my daughter, a loving and straight forward spirit, hugged me, her eyes wet with tears, and said, “I don’t want to lose you, Dad.”
The encounter lasted less than a minute but it gave me a chance to reassure her that I was okay for now and everything would be all right. It was a quiet, loving moment that passed quickly and then we went on with the day.
I hope this post isn’t a downer. I don’t mean it to be. After all, those of us on the Leukemia Train aren’t the only ones on the track. All 8 billion people on this planet, no matter which train they’re riding, are chugging along towards the same station.
But ultimately, I don’t think we have to be afraid.
A rollercoaster without fear
Perhaps dying is like a rollercoaster ride. We find ourselves in worried anticipation as we slowly climb towards the highest peak. When we reach the crest we know the moment we’d feared has come.
Suddenly we drop down on a nearly vertical track. We grab tight at the bars and realize, perhaps for the first time, we are not in control. We are completely at the mercy of whomever designed the insane ride. But then something wonderful happens. Ahead of us, we see the track is about to curve into a gentle slope.
It turns out we didn’t really need to be scared. The Engineer who built the rollercoaster knew what he was doing. Even in free fall, we were being carried safely home.
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