Burying Day

It is Saturday morning in my brother’s house. 
The morning we’ll bury my brother.

The sounds of this house are muted, yet distinct: Saturday morning cartoons are softly playing on a TV somewhere, entertaining young children with no concept of the day’s importance. A hairdryer is already whining as the grown-ups prepare for the rigors and customs of the day ahead. 


The kitchen is filled with the aroma of coffee and pastries in quantities to feed the small army of family and friends that have descended upon this house like a hoard of well-meaning locusts. 


A cool breeze is sweeping the front porch, stacked with portable tables and chairs for the after-event that will be staged here. Inside the house, we’re going through the motions of life, as we prepare to celebrate the life of a remarkable man. 
Our hearts are heavy.

It’s interesting to observe how people deal with death and dying. 
My brother would have been somewhat amused to observe this delicate ballet of personalities and idiosyncrasies in play. Each has busied himself with some perfunctory task to busy the hands and numb the mind while our spirits process what has happened. 

Taking the trash to a dumpster…laying out on the counter rows of coffee mugs…or walking a circuit through the house with an infant…there's a lawn mower droning somewhere on the property in an exhibition of lawn maintenance grief therapy; all necessary things to do to distract from the sadness at hand.

We look at life and death in two-dimensions. 
It’s an either-or-equation: you are either dead or alive, by most estimates. We lose sight of the fact that we actually continue to exist on a different plane, even if our physical bodies do not. The sadness we experienced upon the death of a loved one is because of our lack of perspective on the event.

While I am profoundly saddened at the death of my brother, I heartened by three articles of faith which have sustained me through this dark passage in my life: My brother passed quickly, and did not suffer long; he is living on another plane without pain or sadness; I will see him again. I cannot conceive of having to deal with death under any other conditions.

King David was criticized by his friends when, upon the death of the son he produced with Bathsheba, he got out of his bed and cleaned up to pick up living his life. He told his detractors, in effect, ‘my son is gone, and he cannot come to me; I will go to him.’ (2 Samuel 12:23). 
David had the right perspective.

The 19^th Century evangelist, C. H. Spurgeon, wrote about this tug-of-war of wills between men and immortals, expressing it as an argument: Who are we to dispute against a Higher Power the way things work? Is our sadness an expression of our selfishness, or a lack of faith in outcomes? Would we rather that my brother remained with us, suffering in his cancer-ridden body, just so he could be near us? 


I take immense comfort in knowing, on this morning of his final interment, that he is no longer suffering, he’s no longer restlessly pacing, no more does he raise up in the middle of the night expressing frustration over some unsolved problem toying with his brain.

The Lord Jesus prayed on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane that the Father would place his Disciples with Jesus in paradise, and not on this earth, full of its pain and problems. He said, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am.” (John 17:24).

When we wish for our loved ones to remain with us instead of making that transcendental trip to the next world, do we not put ourselves in direct opposition to the prayer of Jesus for His Disciples? Whether it’s a lack of faith in our final destination, or simple selfishness on our part, our perspective is shallow, one-dimensional. 

This morning, as the low buzz of conversation rises and falls in the next room, a shower is hissing upstairs, and those stinking Saturday morning cartoons are still chattering in the distance, I am comforted to know that Jesus’ prayer has been answered for my brother. 
He has gone to Him, and by faith I have let him go.

Dr. Craig Clanton
February 28, 1958 - May 3, 2011