Morning After Death

Life and death situations are what often bring things to focus with respect to what is important and lasting. In particular, the morning after a death of a friend comes with an awareness like no other day, because someone is missing that was not missing the day before. The circumstances prior to most deaths are such that friends and caregivers are usually present and intensely busy. This just increases the contrast the morning after the death of a loved one. A person awakes to consciousness remembering what just happened. Someone is missing. But in this tender time, it is also a wake-up call. For the believer in the risen Christ, the parting is a loss with the sting of death removed. While it does not necessarily shorten or lighten the grieving process, His promises for those who have called upon Him provide the foundation and framework to awaken the morning after with a different perspective. On the other hand, for those with no such bearings, there is only internal human-derived strength to grapple with life.

Today marks the “morning after death” of Kathy, who died late yesterday. Van, her husband, stayed with her nearly constantly for over a week as her body began failing. She had a pretty rough stay in the hospital with Van at her side. Texts and messages among friends in multiple states and countries knew almost immediately of her death. She was well loved and respected. She had served the Lord in various capacities over the years with her husband. My wife and I, who are acquainted with flirting with death for over a decade, knew her illness period was serious. Of course, we prayed.

Our paths with Van and Kathy have crossed for several decades. We worked with children together. Our friendship got cemented during a week when a bunch of “desert California” children came for a 2-3 week period with us in Virginia (see the image below). Van and Kathy, of course, led the troupe to us. Our relationship became more cemented as we stood with them during a difficult time several years later. It became more cemented recently as they continued to pray for my wife, who has high stage cancer. We continued to see each other. It is hard for us not to think of Van and Kathy together. It is pretty simple: they loved God, helped people in that love, and kept doing it decade after decade together. 

Now Van has finished the course with his wife. His “morning after [her] death” was just a few hours ago. He was closer to Kathy than anyone else. They had been married for a very long time. My heart goes to him. But like him, my bearings are fixed in the larger context of eternity. That does not make everything easy, but it does change things compared to those who have no clue of the reality of a relationship with God. My hat is off to him. He loved his wife and he loves God.

With my wife’s close encounters with death, there have been mornings where I have reached over to see if she is still there and breathing. I don’t relish the thought of her being gone and she does not relish the thought of my being gone. However, in a small measure (compared to Van), we have had to reckon our situation in a larger context quite often because of threatened death. The One who loves us speaks about death, life, and eternal life in numerous places of the Bible, such as 2 Cor 5:1-10. When Christ arose, He made the down payment for us to have eternal life. We are thankful for that assurance. We talk about it on occasion.

In the meantime, we pray for Van and others who knew Kathy, because a loss is never easy when relationships are real. We still have life to live here, so we move forward like Van will. But what about his and our extended friends? What about those now-grown children that came to us from California? Do they have such assurances of knowing God? It is a good time for them to examine things in light of Kathy’s death if they do not.

If the reader does not have assurance that there is something beyond death and has not walked life with a knowledge of Him, would you consider the the record of the Bible and the message of the Good News in Christ? Kathy would say the same thing, but she is with the Lord. Van still does, even on the morning after her death. So do we.