Hi JB,
The first time someone died whom I knew well was in highschool. Nice kid although both he and his brother were space cadets. He had brain cancer and everyone had been saying "he'll pull through, just wait and see" despite the fact that we could all see he was getting progressively worse till he was hospitalized for the last time.
When I was told he had died, I had no idea how to take it. I felt many things simultaneously, bad because I'd remembered making fun of him on a couple of occasions (and yes, before you ask, I was indeed a jerk) and because I realized deep down inside I still didn't care much about that or that he was dead, uncomfortable because death makes one feel uncomfortable and one instinctively wishes it would go away, irritated and aggressive because I'd didn't like to feel that way, and finally scared when I suddenly realized that it could have been me and I was frankly afraid of dying.
Eventually I forgot about it, and got back to my totally self-absorbed teenage lifestyle, but on reflection it was one of the first great "knock-knocks" in my life. These are times when for a brief moment, the eternal questions we desperately try to suppress, manage to break through the defensive clutter of temporal life. Our shield of invulnerability and self-importance is momentarily exposed as a sham, and generally people are made to feel "out of sorts" by it before they can manage to get their illusions nailed back into place again.
If I can give you any advice, it would be to not lose this opportunity (which is what I believe Storch was getting at). This experience has taught you the somewhat uncomfortable and scary fact that as Isaiah 40:6-7 puts it "All flesh is grass, And all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, Because the breath of the LORD blows upon it; Surely the people are grass." and should lead one to seriously reflect upon the consequences of what James said: "For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away."
I know others here will undoubtedly disagree, but for the living, these encounters with death should be a wake up call for us, they should teach us to number our days, to view them as a gift to be used aright, and not something to be squandered and taken for granted. They should cause us to reflect that so much of that which we spend our time squabbling over and killing ourselves and others to gain are really just handfulls of dust, and when we have realized that, to turn our eyes from the earth to the heavens.
I have never enjoyed funerals, and I still don't, even when I am sure of the departed's final destination. I cannot help but grieve with the grieving and lament that ultimately this thing death, is an enemy neither right nor good. But I must admit that it is sometimes easier to preach during a funeral than at any other time, for then I don't have to convince anyone that "it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment" they are generally reflecting on that already. In those moments I can simply give them the advice I have already followed to flee from the wrath to come to the solid rock that not even the storm of death can shake one loose from. (Luke 6:47-48)
- SEAGOON
