I heard a preacher give a sermon on death one time called \u201cDeath\u2019s vehicle.\u201d He waxed eloquent as he informed the congregation: \u201cEverybody\u2019s death has a vehicle that takes them from this life over the bridge to the next. For some it\u2019s cancer. For others it\u2019s an accident. Or a heart attack. Or violence. Or just plain old age. But everybody\u2019s death has a vehicle. The trick is to make sure your tank is filled up when your vehicle pulls up at the curb!\u201d<\/p>\n
My husband\u2019s Great Aunt Kathryn Keller passed away 3 weeks ago. She was a translator for the Wycliffe Bible Translators. She spent her life in the Tabasco region of Mexico creating a written language for a tribe descended from the Mayans, the Chontal people and translating the Bible. My husband Murry and I are in Tucson now going through her trailer and saving mementos to send back to the family in Chambersburg, Pa. where she grew up.<\/p>\n
Kathryn\u2019s vehicle was what the doctors at first called pre-leukemia. \u201cThey say there is something wrong with my platelets,\u201d she told me over the phone some months ago.\u201d She began to have \u00a0monthly, then weekly, then twice weekly transfusions. Then four weeks ago she fell in her trailer, became confused, and was hospitalized. When it was clear that the transfusions weren\u2019t working anymore, she was moved to a transitional apartment where she spent the last 4 days of her life in hospice care, restless, feverish and mentally confused. Her vehicle had pulled up at the curb.\u00a0 A hospital chaplain dropped by to see her. He asked her \u201cKatie, what\u2019s the first thing you want to say to God when you see him?\u201d Immediately her face cleared, her fog seemed to lift and she said, with a strong voice, \u201cI\u2019m going to tell him that I love him.\u201d She fell silent, entered into a coma and died several hours later.<\/p>\n
Devout Jews keep their spiritual tanks filled by reciting the Shema.<\/em> \u201cHear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.\u201d (Deut 6:4) Shema Yisrael<\/em> is the title of a prayer that sums up the monotheistic essence of Judaism. It serves as the centerpiece of the morning and evening Jewish prayer services. Its twice daily recitation is regarded as a mitzvah<\/em> (religious commandment). The words of the Shema<\/em> are the words that parents teach their young children to say before they go to sleep each night. They are to be the last words of the devout Jew. They are the first words and they are the last.<\/p>\n Parents and grandparents taught Katie to \u201ctell God that she loved him\u201d growing up in the Lutheran Church in Chambersburg, Pa.<\/p>\n As a young woman and throughout her life she practiced telling God she loved him every day. Her journals that I\u2019ve spent the past few days going through testify to that fact. So at the end, even in a fevered, confused state when physical and mental senses of direction had flickered out, the \u00a0faith habit of a lifetime took the wheel. \u201cI\u2019m going to tell him that I love him.\u201d<\/p>\n Sometimes it is a good thing that, as the saying goes, \u201cold habits die hard.\u201d I have no doubt that Katie\u2019s last words were also her first.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I heard a preacher give a sermon on death one time called \u201cDeath\u2019s vehicle.\u201d He waxed eloquent as he informed the congregation: \u201cEverybody\u2019s death has a vehicle that takes them from this life over the bridge to the next. For some it\u2019s cancer. For others it\u2019s an accident. Or a heart attack. Or violence. Or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n