Death Sitting Next to You

Yesterday I read a blog I follow by someone I’ve known in cyperspace for a very long time. I find him lovely writer, intelligent and even on occasion sparking with wisdom. There are also shadows in his life. Anyway at his blog yesterday morning he posted a suicide note. I carried that for the rest of the day. Fortunately a later posting showed while he obviously has been thinking along these lines, he had not crossed that line…

But later that day I swung by a congregant’s house who has been in home hospice care. (Bless, bless, eternally bless the hospice movement!) I walked into her room and death was sitting in the chair next to her. If you’ve been in these situations you know what I mean. We were at one of those moments where she could die with the next exhalation or struggle on for a day or two. Probably not, however…

I ended up there for five hours, sitting with her daughter until her daughter’s son came and I became superfluous in this process.

I’ll be checking in today…

Then this morning I received one of the more troubling emails I’ve received.

It came from a woman saying she was a member of the congregation I served in Arizona. Now there are heartless scams going on where people send emails to specific people from people they know claiming to be in a foreign city, having just been mugged and can you (I) send money pronto. So, I must follow up on this before making my direct response.

But again, death seems to shadow.

This time an American woman fell in love with a woman from Mexico. Of course they can’t marry in either country, or bring the other to their country legally. They ended up in Mexico. Which while tight could work, even though the Mexican woman has been cut off from her family. However she, the Mexican national, has become deadly ill.

And now there they are, languishing, money gone, food gone,

death sitting at the table,

waiting.

Whether true or not, and the problem is it is so plausible,

I find it impossible to not think of death today…