Death is Bad

Death is Bad April 5, 2018

It is Easter week, of course, and so I should be wrapped up in a large woolen blanket, what with it also still being winter, eating bonbons and learning how to spell “desert,” I mean, “dessert.” But instead of that I’ve been trying to clean the house, and get the children through some school work, and have also, stupidly, put my toe into the vast, rushing, gently putrid stream of news that is always available on the internet. The trouble is, you can’t just put your toe in. You invariably get sucked all the way down in, like that poor boy who fell into an actual sewer (can’t find the link, sorry, too many days ago) in California.

So, even though I didn’t mean to, I’ve read about Mr. Trump, and Brazil, and Syria, and Facebook, and then I landed on this, which, even though it looks fairly innocuous, made me both ill and weepy, and not in a charming way. Indeed, when I realized where it was headed I began to skim wildly, hoping to avoid actually seeing any of the words.

Essentially, an elderly Canadian couple were allowed to avail themselves of assisted suicide at the same time, so that after 73 years of marriage, they died happily together, so sayeth the article. They fixed the date, they invited the family, they broke out the champagne, they picked the music, and then, hand in hand, they stepped over the threshold of life into death. A sort of anti-wedding if you will, the mirror opposite of what had occurred so many decades before. In love then, in love now, it was the perfect ending to a life lived together–to die at the same moment.

Perhaps if it wasn’t Easter week, if I hadn’t just spent the last many days peering balefully at the crucifixion, waiting for the thrill of all the lights suddenly coming on, all at the same time, during the Gloria, if I hadn’t been really relishing the vanquishing of death by the Lord of Life and Light, I might have been able to read and consider the article with a little more equanimity. But I can’t because I’m faced with the resurrection which says, without any hedging and betting, that death is bad. Death was a thing meant to be destroyed. It will eventually go away and every single person will get his or her body back, either for joy or for misery, for eternity.

The tearing of a soul from a body is a bad thing. It has to be endured by everybody, of course. Even Jesus endured it. And it is often a relief. Indeed, in the midst of its darkness, beauty often comes forth. For someone who has suffered a long time, it is possible even to speak of death as a merciful gift, especially when the dying one is going into the consoling bosom of Abraham.

But these reasonable feelings should never completely quiet the visceral horror of the spirit being torn from its material home, of the human family being wrenched apart, person by person. It is not a cause for celebration. It is not a wedding. It is not a lovely thing that as long as you do it with an injection and Mozart playing in the background, and not a gun, is completely fine. Die this way and not that way and there’ll be no sting, no sorrow, no familiar tragedy.

The sense of mourning when a person goes away forever–in this temporal, blind sense that we are so enslaved and bound by, the great chasm between this life and the next being unsurpassable by those on this side–should never really go away. Indeed, I am struck by the contrast between this old couple, the perverse joy with which they looked forward to death, and the ongoing mourning for MLK.

I happened to be in the car yesterday, driving through our dilapidated downtown, the rain and wind and snow whipping around and driving everyone indoors. I came down toward the river and stopped at the light, gazing for that single moment at the local MLK monument. It is a semi-circle of benches and some ironwork that I can’t exactly make out. The gray and rain made it more than usually forlorn. It wasn’t a mercy for his life to be snatched away so suddenly. It didn’t do any of us any good, least of all the person who took the choice into his own hands. It continues as a great sadness for this whole country, in ways that we rediscover over and over.

For the Christian, I think perhaps the new shocking thing we can say, a thing so simple and so obvious that no real courage is required, is a plain, “Death is bad.” Let’s not celebrate it. Let’s not pretend it’s beautiful. Let’s not cover it with rose petals and lies. It is our enemy. Such a great enemy that we were powerless to overcome it by our own efforts. It took God himself coming to crush it under his heel. No desire have I to diminish the joy, the astonishment of his victory, by claiming his foe as my friend.


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