In The Face of Death
Breath ceased. Metabolisms terminate and halt. Pulses desist. These are but only few signs of death- a condition of life that may strike us any time yet rarely talked about, fearfully thought, mostly abnegated and usually eluded where most of us find it hard to see inklings that it is coming. That possibly next year, month, week, tomorrow or even at this very moment, we will die. It is where we find hard to prepare when in fact, all of us will reach there, and it is only a matter of time and preparations.
Death is life’s ends- the loss of the very trace of life. Where you can no longer see that lose person again or let me say, they can no longer see you again for the rest of their lives, where only pieces of memories that are worth remembering left. Moreover, when this planned time comes, we feel grief-our emotional, physical and spiritual reaction to a death. Personally, I experienced and felt that grief too, when we back 2003, I was in grade-6 that time when my aunt died with an 8-month baby in her womb because of High Blood Pressure. During the last vigil, my heart was like tightly crumpled when her youngest son, a 7-year old boy asked my uncle, “Pa, pukawa na si mama,dugay lagi kayo siya naimata.” I said to myself, how pity is he, in his young age he loosed his mother, how lucky am I to have still my mother. It took many years for the family to recover. However, 7 years later, the grief again stroked the whole family when last June this year my deceased aunt 7 years ago youngest son, my cousin, died in Leukemia in the age of 12. I can feel the emptiness and desolation that the immediate family felt. I even come to a point that I asked God why. Why he let us be with our loved ones in several years when unexpectedly he will get them back? Does he really mean to hurt us? Does he really mean to make us apathetic after being shocked of losing someone we loved?
It took years for me to realize my batty thought and awry perceptions of death. Death therefore is the time when we face our loving creator and leave our temporary abode that God had given. It is clear therefore that we should not be attached to earthly things for we cannot be with them or cannot have them forever. It is our chance to be with our beloved father, death then must not be fear of, and we must concede fervently that we are just temporary boarders in this earth we lived. Although it will be difficult for us to accept the fact but it would be our challenge, to accept death freely, to be always ready and wholeheartedly prepare mentally, physically and spiritually.
Even science had defined death in many ways and described its reasons and causes in many ways; however, by the help of accelerating access of technology, they tried many things and invented many things to extend life a little longer and to be with our loved ones a little longer. However, we failed to realized that everything here on earth are God’s plan, we are just merely God’s creation, therefore, He has the control of everything, He can get us anytime He likes. That is why, we must learn to cherish the moments we have with our loved ones, to say what we want to say, to show what we want to show and to let them feel what we want them to feel. Before it is too late for us to realized and linger in one corner of our room in tears with a few words in mind. “If I only did…”
For us Christians in which we are guided by the Holy Bible, the reality of death is acknowledge as part of the current human condition affected by sin. There is ”a time to be born and a time to die”. (Ecclesiastes 3:2). In Christian’s view of death, to die is to be with God forever, to share eternal life and joy with him. According to John Flavel, when we have once loosed from this shore, we shall quickly wafted to the shore of glorious eternity, therefore, can we not say- I desire to die and to be Christ. It is by death that God often removes His people out of the way of great troubles and temptations. How it may be that by death we will escape some grievous trials, in which we could not and need not endure. By death, we will be relieved from innumerable evils and burdens, which are inseparable from the present state. We will be deliver from indwelling sin, from greatest trouble and from all temptations, from bodily illness and failings and from the afflictions and sorrows of this life, the days our mourning will be ended, and God will wipe away all tears from our eyes. Why then should we not hasten to depart? Why are we unwilling to dies? Are we concerned for our left loved ones? Then let the word of God satisfy us: “leave your fatherless children to me, I will keep them alive and let your widows trust in me”. If the consequences of death will this all and this great, why should we be afraid then? Why not bid it welcomes. It cannot hurt us, it is easy and harmless, and it is like taking off our clothes, of taking rest.
