I never knew death would make me feel like this

TRIGGER WARNING: this article is about death, but not just anyone’s death. It’s about, among other things, your death. Concepts herein are likely to cause deep reflection.

IMAGINE (if Facebook is still around then) a post going up on your wall inviting everyone else to your funeral or memorial service. For all intents and purposes, you are the only one who can’t read it. You. Are. Gone.

It’s a cold, hard fact and reality that death descends on all of us. Each day we’re here on this earth is merely a temporary arrangement where the integration of body and soul is held together at the behest of God before eternal separation of body and soul takes place in an instant, where body begins to become a source of sustenance for the earth, and soul goes someplace else.

Death. Nobody’s getting out of it.

And yet, as I cast an eye over my ‘friends list’ I counted it a privilege that I could visit a few friend’s pages who had died. One in 2018. One in 2011. There were others. Suddenly my mind turned curious for what they know now. I was also curious about their earthly lives. Then something remarkable dawned on me.

I was only curious about them in this particular way because they were deceased. It’s like this form of curiosity only awakens when a person is no more.

I began to wonder about the sanctity of a person in death, which then enlivened me to think about the sanctity of the person in life.

This life always seems so permanent. We always live as if life will continue, and yet 80, 90, 100 years isn’t very long. Go back to the year 1900. I’m thinking that everyone alive at that point in time (barring freaks who can live 120 years) are now no longer. We say that life is fleeting, but it’s kind of unbelievable to think that death is certain.

I wish I could say to a certain man, “I never knew your death would make me feel like this about you. It makes me sad that I didn’t know I’d feel this way. Perhaps I feel this way because you have graduated into something that I’m yet to graduate into. Maybe I feel this way because I missed my opportunity to say what I wished I could have said. But I never realised your time on earth would be so short, or that it would be over before I had the chance to say what I’d wished I’d said.”

I’d say more. I’d say, “Why didn’t you tell me you were going?” Oh, that’s right, you didn’t know. None of us knew. I’d say, “Well, were you ready then?” Oh… that’s right, we don’t always know when we’re going, and so inevitably we put our plans to settle our affairs off. And would we ever be entirely ready—I don’t think so. Ultimately, also, none of us knows what awaits us, whether it the threshold, the journey or destination.

Just like we can never forecast how we’ll feel and what we’ll think and experience when a new life arrives (a daughter or a son, or a granddaughter or grandson), we can never predict what we’ll feel, think and experience at the funeral, or when we read a notice about the death, or hear about it.

Then there’s us. What about our own death? As I look around at all the possessions and trinkets here in my study, I wonder what would happen with them. But that’s just the concrete things. What about the experiences my or our loved ones would have when I’m or we’re gone? Will people manage? Well, they’ll have to. What sort of thoughts will go through some of their minds about what they didn’t say to us or do with us? What regret will they experience for any of that?

Death as it is. There’s no use plunging our heads into the sand and denying death’s power. Well, only if regret is our aim. We have but now to do what we can. What isn’t done is no cause for regret, because we can’t possibly have known the consequences. If we did, we would have done something about it.

Photo by Chris Buckwald on Unsplash