I know someone who got greatly frustrated receiving condolences on the death of her husband. ‘Would you please stop saying that I’ve lost him’, she said, ‘If I had lost him I would have gone to the police and asked them to find him, but I haven’t lost him – he’s dead’.
In her frustration, she, perhaps inadvertently, hit the nail on the head summarising our culture’s attitude to death: we don’t want it, we don’t like it and we don’t even call it ‘death’. I understand it. I do it too. ‘Loss’ is something soft, round, polite and inoffensive. ‘Death’ is final, aggressive and sharp as a scythe that death is often shown holding in popular imagery.
I could preach a sermon inviting us to be braver facing death and naming it, because it is not going anywhere just because we don’t talk about it – it is instead 100% guaranteed to find us one day. Different public voices have already been issuing invitations to change our culture around death, to not shut it out, to be more comfortable with it, because, strangely, familiarity will make things better, not worse.
But I think there are more reasons why we talk about ‘loss’, ‘passing away’, ‘departing’ and not ‘death’. I think at least one of them is because we care. We express our condolences with a pastoral instinct, being careful not to accidentally cut the recipient with that dagger of a word. It hurts as it is, you know it well, and not everyone is ready for the most final word there is, unless they utter it themselves.
I am also wondering if another reason is unexpectedly spiritual. Kathryn Mannix, in her book ‘With the end in mind’, talks about her experiences as a palliative care consultant and tells the stories of many of those she has been with as they died. She says, ‘After sitting at so many deathbeds, and accompanying the final parts of so many people’s journeys, a peculiar familiarity with dying becomes a daily companion. Strangely, this is not a burden or a sadness, but a lightening of perspective and a joyful spark of hope’. My experience with the dying and the dead is much less extensive than that of Dr Mannix, but I can relate to a strange sense of peace a death brings. There is also a sudden knowledge that the person you have loved is indeed ‘gone’, not ‘dead’ – this body, right here, is just not them, it cannot be!
I don’t know if this is still the case, but I have heard that many nurses in hospitals used to open a window as soon as a death has occurred. ‘To let the soul out’, they said. I am sure this practice also stemmed from the deep awareness that the person who was here a minute ago is just no longer in this body. Perhaps it is this same awareness that makes us say ‘departed’ and ‘gone’ instead of ‘dead’.
To me, these words and experiences indicate a perceived hope and quiet confidence in the fact that death is not the end. Perhaps we don’t say the word ‘death’ not out of fear or denial but rather because, whether we have any kind of faith or not, we have some inexplicable spiritual knowledge that it is not final. I think the book of Ecclesiastes speaks about precisely this: ‘God has set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what He has done from the beginning to end’. He is the author of all life and all death, all beginnings and all endings. He has given us a faint awareness of His works and His greatness but none of us can know them fully. I wonder if the moment of death, being right at the boundary between what God has created in this world and everything that exists unseen outside it, can be a window into God’s mind, a glimpse of His eternity that He has placed on our minds and left us wondering.
This is not to say any of this makes it easy to face the death of someone we love. It doesn’t. And it hurts. It often doesn’t matter how much time has passed. The pain might get duller but it won’t disappear.
If we believe that our identity is defined, at least to some extent, through our relationships with each other, then if someone close to us dies, that part of our identity that was linked to them dies too. The closer the relationship, the bigger the chunk of us that goes. Like an antique statue that is missing a limb, we lose something of our wholeness and will quite literally never be the same. Putting aside any talk of spirituality, going through a bereavement can be a very physical experience.
But where the book of Ecclesiastes wonders about abstract things and laments the fact that, despite our wondering about God and eternity, we can never comprehend them, the New Testament gives us confidence in things more tangible. We may not be the same, but Jesus says he will lose nothing of what the Father has given him. So, through Him, none of the people who are gone and none of our missing limbs will be lost. Instead, they will be gathered and made whole. And not only that, but we will be physically raised on the last day.
Bodily resurrection is not something that is easy to believe, especially considering the experiences I have mentioned. I for one am certain that a body with no life in it is just that – it is no longer the person I love. How is it even meant to be raised? But both Jesus appearing and disappearing after His resurrection and yet being physically present and our growing understanding of just how little we know about the fabric of this world make me wonder whether there are many types of physicality. *This* is not the only way to be and bodily resurrection can very well be physical in a way not yet known to us.
If this is so, then with our spiritual instinct that something does exist beyond death and a sense of physicality that transcends what we believe is real and tangible, we have a window into hope. The hope that our loved ones are ok out there, the hope that we will be ok when our time comes and the hope that we will one day be together with those we no longer see in this life. For Christians, this hope is manifested in Christ, through His brutal death and glorious resurrection, and through His promise that those who follow Him on earth will follow Him into heaven. But I also think it is true that God has placed something on all of our hearts, so, whether we have a faith or not, if we look inwardly, we will find a piece of eternity and a glimpse of hope which, paradoxically, becomes more visible and more real as we face death. Amen.