When death isn't fair

No. No. A thousand times, no.

"It's not supposed to be this way." "She had a full life ahead of her." "Her husband and her children needed her." "Why couldn't it have been someone else?"

Today, a former coworker in Michigan buried his wife. She was only 35 years old, but after a freak accident a few months ago, she was incapacitated due to a brain injury. Well-loved and known for her warmth and friendliness, she left behind the husband she adored and two young children with autistic symptoms. I am not even sure they know she is gone--that they have any way to come to grips with the loss.

Several weeks ago, I sat across from my coworker, Dan, in the hospital. It had been less than a week since the injury. The shock still hung in the air, along with a question mark about the future. Would she make it? Did she have any brain function? He wanted to plan things out, to recover some measure of control over their circumstances, but he told us there was only the present moment. His brain wanted to explore possibilities and find solutions, but there were none, really.

At one point he posted something on facebook that said God was not in favor of axonal brain injuries, and my heart lurched. All of us wish we could rewind the clock and make things turn out differently; but Dan's hand has been dealt, and he now faces circumstances he could have never dreamed of. 

I am not sure what his ears heard today at the service and what his heart could bear to dwell on, but I hope and pray that amidst the pain, an underlying peace grounds and holds him.

Everybody goes sometime. But in our admittedly limited understanding and our minds, it was not Ann's time. Unthinkable loss has a way of creating a horrible feeling in the pit of our stomachs; of making our eyes water and our heads sag; of carving out the place inside of us we turned to for a feeling of control of our lives. We are numb, dumbfounded. 

And while it's hard to reconcile competing emotions, at the same time we are grateful.

A friend posted this quote today:

"One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die."

-John Donne

The paradox of Christianity is this: at the very moment the spirit of a loved one who knows Christ flees from this earth, the person appears in heaven. We mourn; they dance. We wonder; they worship. We try to readjust to the loss; they welcome all they have longed for, as the curtain rises to unveil the powerful presence of their Creator.

Perhaps the one thing we do in tandem is this--I imagine that both those left and the one who arrives lie prostrate. Crushing loss gives way to the most brilliant life imaginable. 

Death, thou shalt die. A comfort and a promise: at the end of life as we know it, for those who love God, abundant life wins.