An old friend of mine named Rick passed away yesterday. He had battled through leukemia several times but had recovered and done great things for God in the time that he had. He had spent time doing mission work in Japan, touched many lives, and will be sorely missed.
Most of the time when I mourn the loss of people they are those who have lived long, full lives, at least from my perspective. They are old, their bodies have extended past the traditional foursquare of life, and then they die. Rick, though, was in his mid-40s, the same as me. Most of us today who think about him think of what a shame it was that he didn't have a longer life than this.
Rick's certainly not the first guy of my generation to die early. The cheerleader a few years after high school killed in a car crash. The guy down the hall from me in college who died of an illness over the summer. A guy in my social club who drowned trying to save a kid at the lake. The guy who I picked on in youth group who died a few years ago from an illness. Too many people to name who were alive one day, dead the next, and always it was a surprise to hear that they were gone.
We expect people of a certain age to survive. Even when I heard last weekend that Rick's family was going to take him off a ventilator and it was not expected that he would survive, part of me expected that he would pull through this, that he'd be a scientific miracle, and he would have a few more years, even if it wasn't in good health. That only seemed right and fair.
Mickey Mantle's father died in his 40s, like many men who had worked in the coal mines of NE Oklahoma, and so Mickey assumed that his life would be short as well. His belief in a short life led to his womanizing, his alcoholism, and a life that perhaps did not live up to its potential. He lived into his 70s, but was it better for him to live this way?
But then I wonder whether it is good that we have an expectation to live into our 80s, as most trends now suggest. It is even thought that those who are born today might have a chance to live until they are 150, with better diet and medicine. Continually we are promised a longer life if we will just eat right take care of our bodies. Why do I go to the gym 4 times a week? Why do I bother with vegetables and fruit, even if I don't eat enough of them? Because I'm told that it's better to live longer.
Are we blessed to know that it is likely we will live long lives? We don't want to pull a Mantle and think that since life is (likely to be) short, we'd better do as much sin as we can. But a longer life...does it make us lazy? Do we not live as we ought to live because we think we have too much time? Even though life is longer than some have expected, we have a sense that there's always plenty of time. Mortality is only the problem of the old people, we think.
Maybe this is why so many people have an unfortunate death: many years are tacked onto the end of life that are, by most accounts, unhappy. Countless hours making doctors' appointments, taking medicines that cause too many side effects, becoming a burden upon others, living lives knowing you can't do most of the things you want to do because you are afraid of falling or need to stay home near the toilet. What kind of life is that? We've been brainwashed into thinking that a long life is so much better than a short one.
I've often thought (and said) that the day before I come down with a debilitating illness that starts me on my spiral I want to be hit by a bus. I hope that God will grant me that request. I don't want to live years or decades in old age. Maybe some do...I don't. I'd rather live enough years to be enjoyable, but not so many that life becomes a burden.
We grieve Rick's loss, but he's also fortunate as well. I love my wife and kids and church and job and so many other things. But today Rick is the one who is home with the LORD, who is fellowshiping with others who have been fortunate enough to die in Christ. His physical life is not as long as most of our lives today, but his eternal life has already begun.
I'm still a long ways away from that point in which I fully expect my peers to start dying off, where I don't plan a lot each week because I think I'll probably have to go to somebody's funeral. But a lot of me hopes that I don't have to do that at all; I'd rather be with the Lord first.
