Speaking of Dying

 

            I have been thinking of writing this for a while now. I decided to get to it. It is not an easy subject to write about, and everyone has feeling about it. It is a part of the world and everyday life. It is the other half of living. I am talking about dying. It comes for all of us one day and there is nothing to be done about it. I often look around and think that in 100 years everyone I know will be dead, even probably my two boys. If not they will be very old. People talk about cheating death and living forever, but to be honest, I don’t want to live forever. I am content with getting old, although parts of getting old do indeed suck, but I am ok with it. My youngest son teases me about it, telling me that it won’t be long before I will be dead and what am I going to leave him. I tell him I will leave him the same thing my dad left me, alive.

 

            I was in the town where my father grew up recently. Three of my brothers and me along with my two sons. It’s a little town in southeast Kentucky back in the hills and not close to anything else. My dad’s child hood home is still there, as is a family graveyard and a memorial to my great grandfather. There is the family church that used to be looked after by my great uncle, but since he died it has been taken over by people who are not family. They are doing a good job, but it is not the same, or was not for me. I had visited it years earlier with my father and some of my brothers when there were still more of the family there along with some of my father’s childhood friends. It was interesting to watch my dad be back home. My father left when he was in his twenties and never lived there after that, but you could tell to him, it was still home. The place where he grew up.

 

            This last time my brothers and I were there all of the people who made it home for my dad have since died. My uncle who ran the church, all my dad’s friends he grew up with, all the aunts and uncles that we stayed with on previous visits. They were all gone. They all grew old and did what everyone does, they died. I don’t say this to be cruel or mean or to state the obvious.

 

The town is still there, the buildings are still there, and there are people who remembered my dad and my uncle. I realize while looking around that it was no longer the place my dad called home, that the world had moved on, and the town instead of belonging to my family, now belonged to the families that called it home. There was a room in the church my family ran with all the history of the family and pictures going back a hundred years or more. It is now just a storage room without the history or the photos. I spoke with the lady who looks after the day to day of the church and she just said that no one knew what it all was so they decided they needed the room. The world moves on as it always moves on, and everyone dies. It is simply how it is.

 

            Do not get me wrong, when someone dies it is a difficult thing as they are no longer present in the world, and their life will not be carried into the future except by way of the people that loved them. I am a firm believer that no parent should outlive their children. No parent should have to see their child die. But we all die.

 

            I am asked by some what that means. I can see things, and I have seen people die. The truth is there is no such thing as death. Our physical bodies die, that is true, and from what I understand it is designed by God that our bodies die. They were never meant to be permanent holders of our spirits. Our spirits have their own home to return to, and it would not be right to keep them from it for all time. So our bodies die, but our spirits don’t. They return to their home, the place they are when not on this earth. They go home. Whatever they came to earth to do they have done it and it was time to go. We should be thankful they get to return home, and mourn that we will not see them again in our own lifetime on the earth.

 

            I could tell that by visiting his childhood home my father was saying goodbye to it. He had made a life elsewhere and was going back to it. Just like dying, we go back to the life we have when not on earth. I saw when my father died, he made a beeline for his home. He was done with his job on the earth and had no intent to handing around. I also saw that he was happy, and I saw my mom come out from behind a door to welcome him. I had never seen anything like it in my life; in all my time of seeing things, it was the most beautiful thing I have seen. They danced for a moment so I could see them and then they both disappeared back through the door my mom had come through. I would not deny my mom and dad that moment for anything. I had never seen my dad so free. He had completed his task here on earth and had earned the right to go home.

 

            I think it is that way for everyone. They come to earth because God ask them to, and when they have done what is needed they return home. Not dead at all but full of life and happiness. So mourn the dead, but do not begrudge them for dying. They have earned the right to return home and be at peace.

 

            I speak about death to my own boys, and we talk that there will come a day I will die. I am old for a dad, I was 50 when my oldest was born; so to them I am very old. I have a secret I tell them, and it is that God said I could stay for a long time yet so I could hang out with them. I tell them that I will be bugging them until they are old men themselves. This last part is a lie, but it is one that we understand together. So mourn those who die and miss them, but understand they will be there when it is your time and they will welcome you home. Just as those who have gone before them have welcomed them back home. It is also part of God’s creation.

 

            I for one would not want to live forever, but I am not ready yet to go too soon.

 

Sundance