Grandpa Passing Away

(posted on www.mefchurch.org/forum/real - Jan. 30, 2006)

Hey friends,

I just wanted to share with you about my grandfather passing away. I was at my grandparent's house today; my grandpa was not looking well. You could tell by looking at his face, the color of his skin, the droopiness, that he's close to dying. The Hospice nurse said that he has about 24 hours left. I just received a call from my mom, who is at their house, that his hands and feet are turning blue, his breathing is getting more and more shallow. They don't expect him to last the night. Some of the uncles and aunts are there right now saying goodbye.

Its a strange event for me - I feel fairly distanced from my grandpa; I was never very close to him. Our family became fairly distanced from our relatives when we switched from the catholic church to an evangelical church. So it is strange spending this much time with that side of the famiy, seeing them pray the rosary, seeing them open up and come together and comfort each other. There are moments of laughter as well as of tears. I feel strange, like looking at death from a distance - or maybe up close for the first time. Its an event in life, the end of life, something we all must pass through. I can see how many animistic religions see is simply as part of the cycle. And yet its not supposed to be part of the cycle. Sin in the Bible is an enemy to be conquered by Christ, and came about because of our sin and rebellion.

My grandpa has a stroke a number of months ago that left him speech impaired. Then about a month ago he had another stroke, fell in the bathroom, and lost all of his speech. I remember him a few years back talking about a friend of his who was getting old and lost his sight and ended up committing suicide. My grandpa was really afraid of becoming incapacitated in some basic way. And it happened. And it was tough to see how frusterated and depressed he would get when people couldn't understand him trying to speak, or when he would start to drool at the dinner table without knowing it. We invited him to Christmas dinner but he didn't want to come; Grandma said it was because he was tired of being embarrassed.

Its ugly to see a person begin to die. Its not just the death, maybe not even primarily, unless it's sudden. Its the visible shutting-down, the decay, the degeneration that is so ugly, the slow loss of life and the things that we so often associate with humanness. Maybe that's why people who are dying need, and should be given, such dignity. They feel that their dignity and worth is being taken away, ripped away. And I think that another reason why we must put our faith in, and find our identity deeply rooted in Christ. Otherwise, when we begin to lose the things that we have taken for granted, and have placed our confidence and identity in, we find ourselves in a dark pit of lost-ness and we no longer know who we are (because we never knew who we were to begin with).