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In a few days, it will be the fourth anniversary of my grandma’s trip to heaven (or should I say, her permanent relocation). It’s easy to remember how long it has been, because the same week I watched her die, I watched the birth of a friend’s baby (Julian). He will soon be four years old.
Before her passing, Grandma was in the hospital a couple days for unusual heart palpitations. Her health was otherwise excellent, but in the middle of the night, she fell on her way back to bed. She hit her head on the bedside table, causing internal brain hemorrhaging. She died with 24 hours.
My dad received the call about 1:00 a.m. that she had fallen. When he arrived at the hospital, she was coherent, and remembered I had visited her the night before. Within an hour, she was unconscious, and for another fifteen hours or so, the hemorrhaging in her brain increased. I arrived at the hospital in the morning, and other friends and family came also during the day. My mom never came; she couldn’t bear to see Grandma that way. Toward the end, her body was sweating and heaving for breath, like someone running a marathon, her heart rate increased, and her body temperature elevated to dangerous levels. We knew she had passed when the gasping and heaving slowed, and her body relaxed. A cassette tape recording of my Grandpa Homer (deceased in 1991) singing had been playing near her for hours. When she passed, he was singing “When Jesus Passed By.”
"They took him to the tomb that day
Lazarus was his name
His loved ones wept for death had crept
Into their lives with pain
Oh, but someone sent a message
And soon Jesus did reply
And even death could have no power
When Jesus passes by"
A week later, one of my closest friends delivered a baby at my parents’ home. Benjamin and I were still living in my parents’ office. On the other side of the office wall was my parents’ bathroom, where Melissa labored in the large bathtub for several hours. This was Melissa’s second child, and her first had been born in the hospital via cesarean for “failure to progress.” Determined to avoid a second cesarean, she and her husband chose a home birth with a licensed midwife for their second child. They delivered at my parents’ home because we live about 10 minutes from a hospital and they lived more than 30 minutes from one; they wanted access just in case. Toward the end of labor, the baby’s heart rate slowed enough to concern the midwife, and my mom and I were woken up (again about 1:00 in the morning) to gather around Melissa and pray. Julian was born safe and healthy about an hour later.
During the hour my mom and I spent praying in my parents’ room with Melissa, her husband Stephen, and the two midwives, I had time to think. It is hard to put into words how it felt to spend a day watching someone die, and eight days later, spend an evening watching someone be born. This is life, you know? Birth; death. Endings; beginnings. Through it all, the Lord sees us, knows us, and has an eternal plan.
The feelings associated with losing someone you love are deep, and almost intangible. “Grief” is a drastically insufficient word. Emptiness, loneliness, anger, confusion, despair….there is just this gaping hole, and the bigness and blackness of it seems to overwhelm everything else in your mind and heart.
And yet here I was, watching a new little human be born - one of my favorite things on earth to see. It is miraculous and beautiful every time. Here, “excitement” is yet another vastly insufficient word. Exultation, awe, bubbling joy, amazement, togetherness…..the whole world seems like it should explode in wonder.
I stood there, watching the baby slip into the earth, take his first breath, and was overwhelmed with the juxtaposition of these two experiences. Impossibly, each demanded the total involvement of my thoughts and feelings, seeming to sweep me away into themselves. Yet somehow, I didn’t feel torn between opposing extremes. Instead, I realized I felt whole again.
Neither birth nor death is the complete story. Neither the beginning nor the ending tells you all you need to know. It is both together, and one begets the other. An earthly birth must someday culminate in an earthly death. Yet death is, for Christians, a heavenly beginning. Spiritual birth into salvation is death to our human nature and selfishness.
Thankfully, we were made for eternity. One day we will be “born” into a new earth and a new body, where we will live forever with no more dying.
"No guilt in life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life's first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny"
