Death, Decay and Giving Thanks

I marched into the kitchen about three weeks ago and made the following proclamation to Mr. L: "My entire life right now has become about decay and death." To which he responded, without missing a beat: "I'm really sorry to hear that."

This short snippet from our life of domestic bliss is both a) proof that Mr. L is the best husband in the world and b) an explanation of why I haven't found much time or energy to write on here recently. 

Death has been playing a huge part in my life of late. Our congregation has experienced a number of deaths, which has meant my days have been taken up visiting those who are about to die, meeting with the families of the recently deceased and mourning with those who are newly adjusting to life without a loved one. As you might imagine, this constant barrage of life-end situations has taken a huge toll on my reserves of mental and physical energy. Each day for the last month or so, when I have finally arrived home, I have had stamina for little else except take out, a few hours of mindless television (Drop Dead Diva being my mental junk food of choice these days) and a night of restless sleep.

And death in my work was reflected at my homestead as well. I look out my window at the luscious garden beds and boxes to which I have lovingly tended all summer and see them fading into decay. The hours I've had to spare these past few weeks have been dedicated to tearing out plants at the end of their life: slumping corn stalks, yellowing tomato plants, shriveled pumpkin vines: our yard debris can like a hearse carrying away the remains of a fruitful harvest.

All this to say I've spent most of the last month being tired. And drained. And sad. But I've also been strangely thankful. As has become clear to me lately, many people in this culture do not have an opportunity to face death very often. And it is overwhelming and terrifying and crushing as a pastor so as for anyone. But it is also, I now believe, one of the greatest privileges of being a minister: to journey with people out of this life. It is an honor which I now face with much more humility. It is also, I now understand, a juncture for absorbing some of life's most important lessons. 

Most of the people I've sat with recently who have faced death were not on a whirlwind journey of the world trying to finish off the last items on their bucket list. At their death bed, they were not thinking they should have climbed Mt. Everest or rafted the Amazon or been elected President; they were trying to spend their last meaningful moments with their friends and family. Most of them had no regrets, except that the time they had to spend with those they love was now limited.

And so when I came to the thanksgiving table last week, to sit down for the first time in six years and as many holidays with my family--cousins and aunts, sisters and parents and nephews--I realized in a new way that they are the most valuable thing. And I was more thankful than perhaps I could have ever otherwise been that I was alive and that I had been given this time to spend with them. At our thanksgiving table, all their idiosyncrasies were more loveable, the stories I've heard a million times more hilarious, the recipes we've shared for decades a bit more rich for knowing what a simple but invaluable blessing they are.

So despite the death that has followed me everywhere, a life of gratitude has taken root here in the land of the LIOLIs. And in that spirit I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.