#214  ACCEPTING THE DEATH OF A LOVED ONE

In the light of both human reason and divine revelation, death is a fact which no person can deny.  "It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment."(Hebrews 9:27) Although the fact of death is obvious, many persons find it difficult to come to grips with this fact.  The human demise is viewed by millions as the king of terrors.  In the presence of death, western culture has a tendency to run and hide.  It is viewed as the ultimate personal disaster.  It must be admitted that the death of a loved one is a shattering experience.  A hollow emptiness seems to pervade the very depths of the bereaved person's soul.  He wanders across the desert plain of life from which every memorable landmark seems to have been obliterated.  His loss for the moment seems so absolute and final that he despairs sometimes to the point of hopelessness.  No comfort seems to deaden the immediate, overwhelming sorrow and pain of bereavement.  "Why did this have to happen to me?  Is there no balm in Gilead?  Is there no physician there?"(Jeremiah 8:22)

There are many healthy ways for meeting the shock of bereavement, but denying the reality of death is not one of them.  Psychiatrists tell us that any defense that causes man to persistently escape the perception of a fundamental internal or external reality is psychologically costly.  Such concealment or displacement uses up precious energy that must be drawn from other sources, thus making it more difficult for us to live in a courageous and creative way.  Any delusion, magical thinking or irrational methods by which we blind ourselves to the fact of death is psychologically unsound and spiritually unhealthy.  Since death is one of the essential realities of life, one must prepare for death in order to enjoy life.  Socrates said, "No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death." The foundation for such a philosophy is laid out in the Christian's belief in personal immortality.  Isaiah pointed out that "Death is swallowed up in victory." The fulfillment of this inspired prediction, Paul found in Christ, I Corinthians 15:54-58. With such a conviction, death can be regarded not as a horrible nightmare, but as a natural part of the whole life process.  It is against those who have blinded themselves to its inevitability that death strikes its most cruel blow.  The tragedy of the victory of death is in the way one dies, not in the fact of death itself.

Naturally, no one should try to minimize the serious effect of a disrupted fellowship that is brought on by death.  We long for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still.  A bereaved person should give healthy expression to this feeling of sorrow in whatever thoughts, words and tears may seem natural.  Any unnatural restraint at such a time only hampers the wounded spirit's recovery from the injury it has received.  Suppression of natural emotions often results in serious psychic and spiritual harm.  There is a tremendous healing power in the free expression of genuine sorrow when death is accepted as a fact and faced realistically.  When loved ones die, we should try not to bind them to us with earthbound ties.  They should be released into their new world of immortality.  In accepting the fact of his child's death David said, "Can I bring him back again?  I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."(II Samuel 12:23) Clinging irrationally to a human fellowship that has been broken by death can decimate life, since any unresolved emotional conflict becomes increasingly worse.

Some years ago a Christian couple lost a son, their only child.  The overwhelming pain of bereavement was an excruciating blow to the mother.  Refusing to accept the fact of his death, she kept his room intact for years.  It became a kind of shrine which she visited for several hours daily.  She talked to him and about him in an illusion that defied reason.  Clouds of perpetual sorrow settled upon her like purple mists on graying hills.  She isolated herself from the life of the community and lost all interest in the work and worship of the church.  She developed numerous aches and pains for which no physician could find an organic basis.  Her physical existence presented the strange paradox of living death because she could not accept the fact that life in this world is not forever.  Bereaved persons have a life to live in the present.  Pleasant memories of the dead should not cause us to become absorbed in the past.  That which we love in a person does not die at death, Ecclesiastes 12:7. For related readings, see #209 and #210.