Meditation Moment in Easteride: Saturday, Week 7 '23

I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead 

for billions and billions of years before I was born, 

and had not suffered from the slightest inconvenience of it.

 ~ Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain* 

     Of course, grief is for those who are still earthbound, feeling lost, and sometimes more than a little shell-shocked when a loved one dies. Whatever normal was, it is now really gone and, while a new sense of normal will come, it will take time to adjust. In addition to the enormity of the change in everyday life without that person, and the emotion and pain attached to this powerful loss, there's all the bureaucracy ~ the funeral plans, the paperwork, the finances, the notifications, the legalities, the details that come out of the woodwork just when you can’t think straight. More sad is that because some are so fearful of the inevitable, and can’t even think let alone say the word death or worse: dying, they’re too afraid to make the plans that will so very much help those left behind, and it truly is a very heavy burden on those who are grieving. 
    Death is an open-secret usually discussed in hushed tones and quickly diverted to something else. Of course none of us really want to die and so we sure don't want to talk about it. But we really do need to think and talk about the really helpful preparation for the eventual, the definite, the - yeah, THAT. 
    Whether or not I believe in eternity with Jesus at the end of life is ~ for some purposes ~ irrelevant, and is another sort of preparation to think about with a priest or minister. But what is uppermost in my heart is how do I help those who will be left to do all the required paperwork and funeral stuff all in the midst of missing me (they'd better miss me!)? And what if I suddenly can’t talk, or think, and no one knows how I want to be cared for before the end arrives?

     Lead me sooner, Lord God of the Inevitable, into accepting that my life will end at some point. Let me live into the understanding that all will be well for me and wholly better for my family if I, or we together, do the planning, the will, living will/advanced directive, what kind of memorial or service, and whatever other arrangements such as burial or cremation and where to put me in order for things to go as I'd like. And guide me to have the conversations with them to explain it on a sunny day when all is well and everyone is still healthy and not wait until I’m 80 or 90 or... Perhaps if I give it the "matter-of-fact" treatment, we can then move through the cloudy parts quickly and move back into the other reason we got together ~ just to be together because we can, now. By then, if we work on it together, they'll have all they need to know about how to do the necessary stuff in the aftermath more easily and they can just continue to remember the many happy nows we have had. And I will go easily on my way into eternity without the slightest inconvenience. amen. 

*Samuel Clemens [1835-1910], with his pen name of Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist most famous for his The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was known as the greatest American humorist of his day leaving a treasure trove of great quotes and he has been called the Father of American literature.

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