Sermon: Greeting Death

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Greeting Death

By Charles Rush

July 29, 2007

[ Audio (mp3, 7.9Mb) ]

you were wondering about the title of the sermon this morning, “Greeting Death”, you weren't alone. I noticed other people walking up the street this week wondering what that one was going to be about.

I was actually thinking of a couple of different aspects of death, and I thought I would share this when there was not much going on, in particular because I've noticed, listening to the substantial prayer requests that we've had in the past six months, how many people are dealing with a long-term illness or parents who are growing old and are requiring our care at the end of their life in a very involved way. And secondly because we also have a new movement with hospice that's increasingly asking and inviting the entire family to be part of the process of dying, and that's a dimension of dying that I want to talk about.

You know, it's only one aspect because dying is as varied as our living. I am particularly sensitive to those who are here this morning who have experienced death as a tragedy, who have had a child die, or a young friend die, well before their time, cut off without a future. It is painful, producing a frustration that foments rage and sometimes a paralysis of meaningless cynicism.

We panic with anxiety in these circumstances and that is appropriate. When I was thirteen and walking to school with my friends a car hit my best friend. All of the guys jumped into EMT mode, ran to the nearest house, made calls, got blankets, and we hoped for the best, and we walked around school that day in denial about what happened. We told everyone 'Ronnie will be all right'. Denial is a very powerful emotion, underrated frankly, The principal came over the loud speaker in the afternoon and announced that Ronnie died. I felt dizzy, faint. I slowly got up out of my seat, walked to the hall, opened the emergency exit door, and ran and ran and ran. I ran all the way home, went up to my room and got under the covers, where my mother found me. Forrest Gump was right, 'sometimes you can't run far enough'. We just panic. We are afraid and death comes to us as an ultimate threat. I'm not going to address that tragedy this morning, even though it is very real and very raw.

I want to talk about those times when death is not entirely a threat. The fact of the matter is that we all die and for some of us, indeed an increasing number of us, life does not simply quit, it can conclude. It is not that the tape breaks in the middle of the reel. Dying itself can become a transition, a summing up. It can be a very holy moment. You may not know about this because we simply don't see many people die in our culture. I thought I would share with you part of this experience today.

There was a woman in the church that I served in Princeton named Marion that I used to go visit from time to time. She taught me about death as transition. She was in her late 80's when I met her, though she looked much younger. Marion ran the lunch counter at the 'Balt', which was the pharmacy on Nassau Street, right across from the University. It was the hangout for undergraduates in the 50's. She would listen to all the boys problems, even took a few of them in for the holidays when they had problems going home. She was a mother to a bunch of them and they still kept up with her 30 years later.

Marion developed diabetes late in life and it was easily controlled with insulin but it was a nuisance. She went to visit her doctor for an annual checkup one year and he sent her back for more tests. Then he referred her to an oncologist. She had a good size tumor growing in her abdomen. The standard protocol was to treat it with radiation and chemotherapy. The doctor explained to her about all the side effects and laid out her options and sent her home.

She thought about it and thought about it and she called me up, and asked me to come over for coffee. She explained to me the situation and then she said "I know what I want to do but I'm worried that the ladies at the church are going to try to talk me out of it and think I'm a nut." I said, "Marion, what do you want to do?" "Nothing", she said. "I don't want to wear my self ragged just trying to stay alive another year. We've all got to go sometime and I'd like to spend the rest of my time here in my house with my birds and my championship wrestling on the TV."

Marion was wonderfully eccentric. She loved championship wrestling. So did my son Ian so I took him over to visit her once and we ate popcorn and watched Hulk Hogan destroys The Undertaker. Ian at nine and Marion at 88 sitting together cheering Hulk Hogan... what a time.

Marion told the church ladies about her decision over Wednesday lunch. They always went out on Wednesdays for lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Sure enough, there was quite a clamor over this news. Almost all of them thought she should fight the cancer more aggressively but Marion stood her ground. "11' the cancer won't get me, the diabetes probably will... We've all got to die sometime." Some of the ladies called me to register their concern. "Go tell her Reverend. She'll listen to you." But I didn't and she wouldn't have listened to me anyhow.

Instead, I told Marion that I would drop by every 10 days or so and just chat. Mostly, I would ask her questions about her youth. I asked her what Princeton was like in the 20's. No cars, lots of horses, all farms. She told me about her life one installment at a time. About how she got mad at her parents as a teenager and took off. She hitchhiked to her uncle's house ... in Florida. He got on the train with her and took her all the way back home. And then when she was out of high school, she decided she just had to get out of New Jersey. (Teenagers thought it was boring and stifling then too). So she hitchhiked west, not sure where she was going. Finally, she landed in LA. Couldn't go much farther west so she decided to stay. Hooked up with two other young women in their twenties and they got an apartment in Hollywood. They couldn't save any money so they decided to open their apartment to the guys at Paramount pictures so they could play poker in the afternoons. For a few years, Marion ran an illegal house where games of chance were played. (I don't think she ever shared that with the church ladies).

Finally, she hitchhiked back home. Stopped on a reservation in New Mexico where she became engaged to the Chief of a Native-American tribe. One morning she woke up and realized that relationship would not work. It was back on the road. Eventually she came all the way back to boring old Princeton where she married and lived for the rest of her life.

It was easy to talk to Marion. She was a real character. All through that spring I would stop by for a coffee, another installment for about 45 minutes and I'd get back to work. It was a great tale, sometimes sad like when her husband died, sometimes very funny like a run in she had with the President of the University that I am not at liberty to describe. The longer this went on, the more I could see her putting the whole of her life in perspective.

Are there things in your life you really regret doing? Turns you really wish you had not taken? Maybe there were things that you found painful years ago, embarrassing or painful mistakes that you made that you look at differently nowadays? Now that you are past them, maybe you can see that you grew in a way you probably wouldn't have if you hadn't made these mistakes.

I could see Marion recovering all of who she was: sassy and sexy, pert, young and bashful, at mid-life adopting other children for awhile because she did not have her own, independent, caring, consoling, encouraging. Some parts of her self she liked more than other parts. But she was recovering all the parts and putting them together. And she was accepting herself for who she was, the parts that were virtuous, the parts that were ugly, and the parts that were sinful- for that is important too. She began to get some perspective on her life and understand how it fit together as a whole. She began to see significance in a number of minor stories from earlier in her life that started something that would later have an enormous impact. A couple of times she would just stop and sit wistfully about things that she had wanted to do but never got to. She was summing up the significance of her life and coming to grips with it. She was concluding her life.

I got a call one day that she was in the hospital. The tumor was causing some complications and would only get worse. I took Archer Vaughn to visit her. Archer was her same age and had known her all of his life. We stood in the hospital room. Arch began to tell a story about the two of them fighting some other kid in the fifth grade, 78 years ago. Marion shot back "you remember Jack Miller, what a wimp he was." On and on those two went remembering elementary school together.

Marion was transferred to a nursing facility with a Do Not Resuscitate order put on her charts. I would talk to her occasionally about death. She was not afraid of dying. I asked her what she thought about the afterlife. Her thoughts on that changed the closer she got to it. From a distance, she had a skeptical faith about the subject, a view that she held most of her life. The closer she got to death, the more her faith balanced out her skepticism. At the very end, she mentioned one time that she thought of heaven as a kind of peace after the struggle.

Within a week she took a turn downwards. Both times I stopped by to see her she said more of less the same thing. I'd say "Marion, how are you doing today?" "Rev" (she always called me Rev.) "Rev, I'm tired. I'm so tired."

And she looked it too. The second time, I was moved. We were mostly silent together as speech was too exhausting. It is my custom to pray with people in the hospital. This time I was moved to ask her a question. I said "Marion, how should I pray for you? What should I say?"

She said, "Ask God to take me, I'm ready to go". Frankly, I was stunned silent for a moment. No one had ever asked me that before. I am the one who tries to give people hope and encouragement, strength and confidence in the midst of great threat. But, coming from her, in that context, it was not a morbid prayer. It was not a hopeless request. It was not despairing. Even still, I was sobered, almost grave at the prospect. And I prayed something like "God, Marion has been such a blessing to us. let her go, 0 God that she might continue her journey with you beyond her earthly life. We release her to you." Amen.

I was awkward as we held hands. So I looked at her and I said "Marion, are you going to be all right?" And she gave me a big smile and did the thumbs up. I leaned over and kissed her and left. It was early evening and I got all the way to my car before I came to my senses and walked back to the nurses' station. I handed the head nurse my card and wrote my home number on it. I said "if Marion Opdyke dies call me if you please." At 3:30 in the morning my phone rang. It was the nurse to tell me that Marion had just breathed her last breath.

We have more control over these things than most people realize. If we are lucky enough to live a long life like Marion, if we are lucky enough to conclude our lives rather than simply have them quit, we will go through the great spiritual exercise of 'letting go'.

We have been practicing all of our lives. And the older we get the more central 'letting go' becomes. Every fall, a new batch of kindergartners goes to their first day of class and half of the mothers have a small crisis. The kids are fine but the Mom's can't let them go. Teenagers one day start making decisions on their own becoming independent and you can advise them, cajole them, but you have to 'Jet them go', make their own mistakes and suffer the consequences. In the middle of your life some of your best friends move away. Although you will still see them in the future, it will not be the same, and it is very hard to let go of people that you know so well and they know you and you can really just be yourself around them. But you have to let them go. One day you wake up and realize that you really don't need this much house anymore. But it has so many good memories and it represents such security, and you have to let it go. Someone has said that we spend the first half of our life collecting stuff and the second half giving it away. Usually right around the time that you move out of that house. you begin to realize that you don't need all of this stuff and you start to parcel it out to the kids, relatives. the yard sale. What tough work that is, because it is a 'letting go'. We are letting go of things but these things are tilled with memory and meaning. They are anchors to the past and we are 'letting them go' . I'm sure this is going to be tough for me when I have to part with my books. That is going to be difficult. In fact. I am not planning to part with all of them. I'm going to take a short stack with me to heaven in case there is a waiting line to process our applications for admission.

We have to 'let go' of our vitality and youth. Sometimes we have to let go of a spouse in mid-life. Sometimes we have to let go of hopes and aspirations that we will never see fulfilled in this life. All of these are poignant, all of them difficult spiritual work. And each in their own way are preparing us for the day when we will have to let go of this life.

It is a profoundly 'holy moment', a sacred passage. It has the same mystery and awe as birth. And just as we are enlivened in fundamental gratitude over the deep mystery and joy of birth, so we are made tender in fundamental love over the deep mystery and sadness of death. At these moments we stand in simple and profound awe at the wonder of life. I have to believe that the God who made us so tender in the presence of the gift of birth. who makes us so tender in the passing of life, must have that same tenderness for us in the after life as well. We shall become the children of the God of tenderness. This is our faith. Amen.