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The Grief of Death

- by Dan W. Dooley

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Recently I was standing in a hospital ICU ward when I saw two men enter pushing a gurney with a neatly folded green velvet blanket on it. I knew exactly what had brought them here. Trying not to appear to nosey, I watched as they entered one of the rooms and soon emerged, this time with the blanket covering the body of the newly deceased. I wondered about the one now leaving the hospital for the final time. Young? Old? Married? Single? A mother? A father? Who? Would someone be going home alone tonight, and realizing that what seem like a bad dream was all too real. That loved one would never be coming home again. That's a scene I've seen all too often in hospitals.

On a recent Thursday evening, Sandy and I paid our respects to the family of a four year old who had lost a long, yes most of her short life, battle with cancer. Far too young to be cut short of life.

Just a few Friday evenings earlier my wife and I went to a funeral home to pay our respects to a friend of ours who had just that week lost her older brother. A man still in the prime of life, certainly a lot younger than I am, who had suddenly, and without prior warning symptoms died. He left in addition to parents and siblings, a wife and three children.

In 1997 we lost our firstborn son to cancer. He was twenty eight years old. Though we had prepared ourselves for the possibility of his losing the battle for the time he had been sick and accepted the inevitable outcome in his final weeks, there was still no steeling ourselves from the grief when it happened.

I am acquainted with a man who this last year lost his fifteen year old son to suicide. The senselessness of the loss, I can hardly imagine.

We would think that something so natural to human existence, would be much easier to accept and deal with than it is. The fact is, it is not, and it's not going to be. Ever. There is going to be no time when we honestly accept it with any sort of ease. Even as Christians, and if and when we know that the departed one is truly in the presence of God, though we are at peace with the knowledge of their place with God, we're still not going to be joyful about it. In the whole that is. Sure, we can celebrate their "homecoming" for after all, a lifetime of sickness and suffering for them is past and they are finally in the place they've long yearned to be. There is still a hole created in our lives.

It is just not natural for us to see death but as a loss to us the remaining. Neither is it natural for us to prefer our own death over life. Even though we know what is on the other side, the natural part of us which God created, prefers to remain here with those we love for as long as possible. Even the Apostle Paul could not easily make that choice. He struggled with it and tells us:

The hard cold truth is however, we will not be allowed the choice. At some point in time it will be made for us. At some point in our life we will, if we have not already, come face to face with the loss or impending loss of someone very dear to us. Or our own impending death. It may occur suddenly and without warning, or we may face it slowly.

How we face that time makes all the difference in the world. Where we draw our source of strength, or for that matter, if we maintain any strength at all or, or lose our grip and fall instead, will all make a difference in how well we recover, adjust and continue on with life or face directly, our own death.

We can go it alone, so to speak, as those who have not a source of strength outside of themselves would do, or at least attempt to do. "Tough if up", they might say. "Just be strong. Keep a stiff upper lip." That sure seems like a cold and lonely world, to me at least.

Or, we can recognize that we don't have to go it alone. There is a source of strength outside of and bigger than us. That is the one who Himself not only witnessed death, even of His close friends, but went on to experience it Himself and actually overcame and defeated death. He did so proving to us that death is not the end of all things and that it is not the end to be feared. With His return from death, He has promised us the same. No, we won't return to this physical world in the way He did, but we will live again, and then in His presence, and forever. For the Christian, the follower of Christ, death is just the beginning of our real life. Our permanent life, if you will. Even if we manage to live to one hundred or more years here, it's but a short fraction of time compared to the life beyond.

The Bible contains numerous statements telling us of God's plans for us on the other side and of the overcoming of death through Jesus. Here are just a few:

We are not going to escape out of this world alive. The Bible says "man is destined to die once" (Heb. 9:27 NIV) so in that, our ultimate physical fate is predicted. The knowledge that there is something more and something better for us on the other side of death can be a tremendous source of comfort for us as we deal with losing someone dear to us, or as we approach the time of our own departure from this life.

What if you don't have that confidence? That assurance that once you depart this life, you will be forever at peace in the presence of Christ. Or, the assurance that you will eventually see once again, a departed loved one who has died in Christ and now awaits in His presence. You can have it, you know. There is nothing hard about it. Nothing strange and mysterious, and certainly nothing forbidding you to have it. Jesus is ready and eager to accept you into His Kingdom. He is ready to welcome you as a son or daughter. It is a simple matter of accepting Him for who He is and asking Him to make the changes in your life He wants to. No, it's not a matter of you're or my being good enough. We just can't do that. It's all on Him. Put your life in His hands and see what a difference He makes.

© Dan W. Dooley 2004

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Dan W. Dooley is husband, father, grandfather, and creator and owner of Dooley's Treasure Chest and Treasure Chest Ministries. He is an ordained minister in affiliation with United Christian Faith Ministries (UCFM).