Our son-in-law's dad died today. Jim McKeaveney was my age. He had lung cancer....and was a smoker. Not that it's relevant now, but I sit and wonder what his life would have been like if he had not smoked. Perhaps not any different...but I do wonder....
It's difficult for his wife. She will be alone...just like our neighbor, Madge, who lost her husband a week or so ago. Death changes things. The experience changes our life and the living of it for those who remain behind. It changes our perspectives too, on a lot of things. It seems to suck the very life we have, out of us and we're left with a shell of a body that wants to cry and wants everything to be as it was just yesterday....WITH the person who has just died. We can't seem to wrap our heads around this permanency of death. We see it happening to many folks around us but we're never really quite prepared for it happening to us. Why is that. As I've asked before, why are we so oblivious of the obvious? I know we aren't supposed to walk around gloomily, as if it was our last day, but we need to be at least "spiritually aware" that life doesn't last forever. We are never guaranteed 85 or 90 years of existence....we know that. Babies die. Children die. Teens die. Middle aged folks die. We always want our lives and those we love, to be long and healthy and worthwhile. But it just isn't always so.
Thinking on that makes me very appreciative of every day I have. Seeing death, I become acutely aware of it's realness, it's existence and I am once more placed into the mode of grieving. I walk through the all-familiar stages with those I love.
I hate to be insensitive, but death as I see it, is a true character builder....or it certainly can be. It can build us up into a more faith-oriented person, or if one doesn't believe, it can make you a stronger individual. I do believe it can do both. Even when we are young, and experience the loss of a loved one, it can be to our betterment. "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger", kind of mentality.
The death of Jim will change his family. Since I believe in the hereafter, I believe his death has the possibility of changing their lives for the better. It will all be up to them though. Jim was a good man...a handsome Irishman, no less (our son-in-law is very much like him!). I always enjoyed being in his company, although it didn't happen too often. He had a good sense of humour too. I liked that about him. He was quiet in his own way and a very private person. He will be missed. He loved our daughter too, like his own....and she appreciated him for who he was. Those kinds of things can never be taken away. And Brittney loved her pappa too! She now must learn about the sting of death and how it feels and how to deal with it all....how to cry and ask questions and be angry and afraid....all the things that death brings out in us will be experienced by her in the days and weeks to come.
I trust that any wisdom I may have gained, as one somewhat akin to death, may be used to be of help to my children. May God allow it to be so.
No comments:
Post a Comment