Living With Dying

My 93-year-old mother-in-law is dying. Well, actually, we are all dying, just in different ways and at different paces. For Mary Fiero the process happens to be more evident and advanced than my own. The inevitable is, nevertheless, unavoidable. To get the most we can from this life, we ought not to shy away from its ending. To avert our eyes at what we think is unpleasant is perhaps to miss a miracle and a marvelous blessing.

Unbeknownst to herself or anyone else, Mary fractured her ankle a while ago. The fracture became infected. When she could no longer walk because of the pain and swelling, she was transported to the hospital, from which she was transferred to a sub-acute rehab facility, and finally she has landed in a skilled nursing facility, where we expect she will live out the rest of her days.

I’m driving my wife, Evelyn, to Long Beach on Saturday. I will then fly back home so I can attend to the daily necessities of making a living while she stays at her mother's house and helps her brothers go through the house to get it ready to put on the market. And of course she will spend time with her mother. It is impossible to predict at this point what is going to happen. It seems unlikely that Mary will recover and come home, but her passing is not necessarily imminent, either. It is liable to be a long, slow process. We need to be prepared not only for the inevitable, but for a protracted vigil with many twists and turns and ups and downs.

This is the time in life when the Gospel of Jesus Christ means the most. Life comes into perspective, priorities get aligned, and the true values of family and love take center stage. The daily trials and troubles of living mortal life in a fallen world lose a little of their urgency when you are close to someone from whom those troubles slip so easily and quietly away.

Where do we look for solace when we face our endings? It is certainly not in the stuff we leave behind. We can look for meaning in the lives we have touched, the people we have helped, the children we have raised, the friends we have comforted, the less fortunate we have lifted, the needy we have served. But for me, even that is not enough. The people we leave behind are also mortal and will someday be gone. Suffering and sorrow, joy and pleasure are all temporary in this world. In the final analysis, they have no meaning if all there is, is this life and nothing more.

Thank God for Jesus Christ. He not only taught but proved with infallible witness that this life is not all there is. Hope is in Christ. Life is in Christ. Joy is in Christ. He is the Light, the Life and the Way. Christ promises that we will live forever, and he backs up his promise with his own resurrection. That which he did for himself he promises to do for everyone else.

The comfort in the doctrine of Christ is not that I will live forever, but that we will live forever. Those lives I have touched and helped and raised and comforted and lifted and served will not be obliterated. They will go on, as I will go on, because of a merciful, loving, living, joyful, all-powerful, all-knowing God and His Son, whom He sent as a sign and a beacon to all of His children. Hundreds saw the resurrected Christ in Jerusalem. Thousands saw him and touched his hands and feet in ancient America. Men and women in our day have seen him and talked with him. Fifteen men stand as living witnesses of the Living Christ today. God does not abandon us or leave us comfortless.

Christ is the Good News. Everyone who wants to be saved will be saved in a kingdom of glory. God really does intend to save every one of His children who want to be saved, which is pretty much all of us. Not everyone wants to be exalted – at least not enough to humble himself and repent and come to Christ for the full measure of the power of His Atonement – but everyone will have as much light and glory and joy for eternity as he truly wants and is willing to accept. That is God’s promise through His Son.

I know these things are true just as surely as I know that I live today, as surely as I see the sun and breathe the air around me, as surely as I feel the ground beneath my feet and earth’s gravity holding me in place. For Christ is the Light of the world, the Life of the world, the Rock of salvation, and the Anchor of my soul.

For Mary Fiero, who has lived a good life, who raised good children and grandchildren, who loved many more children whom she cared for in her home for thirty years, who served many in her church and in her neighborhood, who wore out her life doing the very best she knew how to do, I have great hope. I pray for her, that the days she has left will be peaceful. I pray for all who will care for her and sit with her and reminisce with her that they may be compassionate and kind and full of joy. May the miracle of the life she is leaving behind be but a dim reflection of the miracle of the new life she is entering.

May God help me to see myself in her. May my compass be free from the static of the world. May I see others for who they really are - children of God, very old and valiant spirits in frail and temporary shells. May I remember who I am. May we all remember and thank God.