Precious in the sight of the Lord
is the death of his faithful ones.
--Psalm 116:15 NRSV
We’ve passed into autumn and my heart’s been tender
lately. I keep thinking about my mother who died two year’s ago this
November. Two years ago on Labor Day
weekend my mother fell and hit her head. The scans of her head revealed she had
a brain tumor and two months later it killed her. The months of September and October
2018 were filled with frantic trips to see the oncologist to discuss the biopsy
and radiation treatments just to give my mother a few more weeks or months. All
of that was fruitless, because my mother didn’t have more time. She died slowly
but painlessly under the care of the great people at KC Hospice’s Hospice House
in south KC.
I know I’m not done grieving my mother, because I tear
up at the strangest times. The Hunger Games young adult books keep
making me cry. My younger son and I have been reading The Hunger Games series
together. It’s a powerful series that raises questions about government
manipulation, violence as entertainment and even compassion for one’s enemies.
When death comes in these books, it often comes suddenly. Yet, the deaths in
these books are not gratuitous and those who die are often mourned. The main character and narrator finds time to
grieve companions and loved ones in ways that are all the more tender because
their context seems so uncaring. I keep choking up every time it happens, and I
think of sitting by my mother’s bedside as she moved from this life into the
next. If I’m crying while reading The Hunger Games something must really
be going on inside of me!
I subscribe to a daily devotional that arrives in my
email inbox each morning offered by The United Church of Christ. A recent onewritten by UCC minister Quinn Caldwell made me think about death in a
completely different way. I haven’t seen the musical Hamilton but Caldwell
describes what happens at its conclusion. (SPOILER ALERT—skip ahead if you
don’t want to read what happens at the end of Hamilton)
At the very end of the musical Hamilton,
the newly deceased Eliza Hamilton, having been reunited with her son and
husband, faces the audience. Her eyes grow wide, she gasps loudly in delight,
and the house goes dark. Curtain.
Much has been made of that gasp, especially in the days since those of us who
couldn’t afford to see the show in person watched it streaming online. What did
she see, or understand? Was it God? Did she break the fourth wall and see the
audience sitting there and realize the work she’d done to preserve her
husband’s legacy had come to new fruition? Something else? Lin Manuel Miranda’s
not telling, and of course that’s part of the point.
I had never considered the moment of death resulting in a gasp of surprise by
the one who has died. I’ve always thought about the light people report seeing
who have had near-death experiences. I’ve thought of the one who dies
experiencing peace or joy when they show up in heaven—whatever heaven is like.
I have never thought that a surprise great enough to make one gasp was waiting
for each of us.
Images that come to mind when I ponder that kind of
surprise are the reaction of folks when the Publisher’s Clearinghouse people
show up with a giant check or the reaction of the audience when Oprah gave each
of them a new car or maybe one of those America’s Funniest Videos where the
kids are told they are headed on a surprise trip to Disney World. Yet, since
this is God we are talking about, the surprise waiting for us is even greater
than any of those!
As if I haven’t had enough unexpected tears lately,
Quinn Caldwell goes on in his devotional to quote the hymn that always makes me
cry when its sung in church.
There’s a line in the hymn “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry” that regularly makes me weep. At the end, after the hymn
has taken us through a human lifetime marked by God’s constant presence, it
says,
“As the evening gently closes in
and you shut your weary eyes,
I’ll be there as I have always been,
with just one more surprise.”
It's good to know I’m not alone in crying over this
hymn. I guess I’ve been too teary to ponder that final line “just one more
surprise.’ Again, of all things I’ve considered dying would be like, I had
never thought of the dying person receiving such a joyful surprise after their
body exhales its last breath. What an amazing thought.
If you see me over the next few weeks, you might find
me getting teary-eyed at strange moments. I keep marveling at whatever the
latest weird thing is to make me cry and think of my mom. Now, I’m imagining my
mother’s gasp at the surprise God had waiting for her. I wonder what amazing
thing made her gasp so?
Grace and Peace,
Chase
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