Death sometimes seems like something that happens to the guy down the street, the woman in the newspaper photos, the old fellow at the nursing home. Many of us are astonished when the hand of death comes knocking at our own door — which explains why some people die unprepared.
It took my husband and me years to come up with a will because seeing the lawyer was an admission of mortality — and even though the obituary section never lacked entries, we still thought we’d avoid the inevitable.
“He was so young,” people say about my husband — which is true since he was 55 rather than 85. Still, shortly after his death, I was shocked to hear about another man —in his 40s and with four children—who died suddenly from a brain aneurysm.
All over the world, the unimaginable and unspeakable is happening daily to people who are supposedly too young to die.
My husband was not overweight, didn’t smoke, exercised regularly and took vitamins. Still, he died quite unexpectedly of a heart attack — and since then I’ve heard from numerous readers who lost spouses in similar circumstances.
Scripture tells us death comes like a thief in the night — and you probably remember the prayer from childhood, “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Still, most of us think of death as something decades in the future.
Even if he had no inkling he would die that day, my dearest husband —who loved the Lord and read scripture daily —was spiritually ready. He was a kind fellow who strongly believed in the promises of Christ — and received Holy Communion every Sunday.
Preparing for his funeral was incredibly painful but not complicated because Jef had written a letter when we signed our wills, saying he wanted Monsignor Richard Lopez to celebrate the Mass — and also mentioning favorite hymns.
In his sermon, Monsignor Lopez described my husband’s death as shocking, but not tragic. “A tragic death is not a sudden death, nor the death of a young person…in terms of eternity we all die young. A tragic death is one in which someone is not prepared to die,” he said.
He added, “Only that person’s life is wasted who went on living so deceived by life’s joys and sorrows that he never became aware that God exists — and that he exists before God.”
Forging a friendship with God is the purpose of our lives on this planet, yet how often we forget the essential things. We turn jobs and physical fitness into idols, and we don’t reach out to God because we figure we’ll do that on our deathbed.
We aren’t on this earth to fatten our resume, make a big name and build a mansion. These things might look nice listed in our obituaries, but the saying “You can’t take it with you” is so true.
What we carry with us, in the end, is the love we showed our neighbors, the prayers we whispered each night, the graces bestowed upon us — and most importantly our relationship with God.
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