Aunt Mart's Death

"For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten. Also, their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they have no portion anymore to time indefinite in anything that has to be done under the sun." -Ecclesiastes 9:5-6

"All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in She′ol, the place to which you are going." -Ecclesiastes 9:10

Today I visited my Aunt Mart. The doctors gave her hours to live.

She looked different than other times - she had lost weight, but more significantly, she looked afraid and resistant.

It made me think... how painful it must be to be aware of the fact that you are dying. The awareness of dying would be just as painful - maybe more painful - than any physical pain associated with dying.

Awareness that this is the end of the only thing you have ever known. The fear of whether death will be painful or painless. The fear of what happens next. Will you meet your maker? Will you go to a heaven? A hell? Will nothing at all happen, and you just decay into carbon and that's it?

It reminded me of a concept that came up in yoga. The concept of no more. When everyday you get cookies from the cookie jar. And if there are no more in the cookie jar, you go in your pantry and get them from the oreo package. And if there are no more in the pantry, you go to the grocery store and buy some. But if there are no more at the grocery store, then what? The concept actually completely blew my mind... because of how rare it is in the first world that we would truly have "no more" of a particular thing.

It got me thinking three things...

(1) On the concept of no more... There are so many things we don't have that are perfectly renewable things, gifts we just choose not to give ourselves. Like happiness or gratitude. There is no finite amount of these things. When we don't have them, it is because we are choosing not to have them. They cost nothing. They come from within. They produce nothing bad. Nothing bad ever came from being happy or grateful.

(2) On the concept of death... why do we die? And here's what I came up with...

God wants contrast. Death contrasts life. Evil contrasts good. Finite contrasts infinite. Storms contrast sunshine. God gave us the blessing of these interesting and dynamic lives where very good things and very bad things are guaranteed to happen to us.

(3) It's all part of a bigger plan. A cookieless plan that involves death. Part of our humanness is that we can't see past "no more cookies" and "no more life." We can't even conceive of it. But that's when we need our faith the most. That's when we need to submit to the Lord and his plan. If you live your life, letting Him run the show, asking always what He wants first and what you want second, you will be best prepared for death... so be here to glorify Him - not yourself!