Faith Works 2-9-24

Faith Works 2-9-24
Jeff Gill

Sitting with death
___


Most of the last year I spent sitting with death. My father-in-law was declining slowly, but steadily, inexorably. Getting better was not in the cards. He was 94, tired, and ready, something he said often.

When I first came to live with him, as his mobility and memory were on a race to deteriorate the fastest (memory was winning that particular race), I would hear certain stories on constant repeat, but that was something I was used to, working with elderly people over many years.

The challenge was to see if, by gentle nudging, I could also get some new stories out of him. To my satisfaction and his apparent enjoyment this was successful. There were side trips off the beaten track I could get him to take, and by a judicious mix of carefully timed questions and well placed silences, I learned a number of things about Buck's childhood and early maturity.

One key was how he would often respond to a query with "oh, I can't remember that stuff, that's long ago and forgotten." If I could wait the right way, open to listening without giving the impression of expectation, he would after a long pause spark himself into a blaze of recollection. I treasure those moments, as well as those stories.

But there came a time when his replies grew fainter, trailed off faster, and stopped almost altogether. It was only the familiar pattern of meals and household routines that was left us, and even that in single phrases or even just a word, which themselves devolved into pointing and gestures. There were no more stories to tell.

We had a few months like that. The talking was almost entirely over. His hearing or comprehension (we were never sure which) was gone, and in time even the pattern of the day was mostly lost, with breakfast followed by lunch which preceded supper, unless towards the end even that was declined. In between, in a mix of dozing and wakefulness, we were waiting.

Buck often said, matter of factly, he was waiting to die. That was next on his list. It is not on mine, but I'm closer to it than I once was. As a reality forming the last bit of punctuation for life, the full stop, period or exclamation point, it was drawing near to both of us. And what I became more familiar with was how it is just that: an approaching reality like the setting or the rising of the sun. It will come when it comes, and there's not a great deal we can do about that.

As someone who has done many hundreds of funerals, and sat with people through dozens of last vigils, I thought I was used to this, but to simply sit for months with death was something new. It was a moving past being able to do anything, or to learn anything, or to help, even. It was a season of simple acceptance.

It was all more complicated than that in the details, but that was the underlying chord, the ongoing bass note for the rest of our days together. The need to accept that we were both of us sitting with death. And as Paul said to the fellowship in Rome, "whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."

And in the Lord, whose steadfast love endures forever, they are both of them very near to each other. Life, and death. Near enough that it reminds you, after sitting with it for long enough, that those who are in death are not all that far away from we who are in life. In either direction, we are near to one another, and love finds the distance no trouble at all.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's working on life a bit more these days. Tell him your thoughts on life or death at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.