Death is not my friend.

August 28 2005. The day my dad passed away. Details swirling in my head. Remembering his last hug as he headed out the door to play basketball.

Rob and I ‘happening’ to be in Minnesota, visiting from Seattle, when the phone rang in my parents house.

Too suddenly. Too unexpectedly death came.

I miss my dad’s sense of adventure, his integrity, his compassion, his intentionality, his encouragement, his gift of coming along side people to help them discover who they were made to be.

My dad believed in me. He saw me and he loved me. I always knew in his eyes I was beautiful. What greater gift can a daughter receive from her father?

When I’m asked does loss get easier, the answer is yes. And no. I can still feel the same intensity of emotion, of grief as I did seven years ago. But it comes less frequently.

In those days, weeks, months after his death- walking in grayness, numbness was the majority of my days. Getting my mind around the fact that my very engaging, full of life dad was no longer here. Watching the world around me carry on and I want to shout “Do you not know what just happened? How can you be grocery shopping, working, laughing…living.”

Now the majority of my days are filled with what days are filled with. Routines that seven years ago were a struggle. Remembering my dad often bringing smiles of sweet stories and memorable quotes. But there are moments grief comes sweeping in unannounced.

I can hear 93 times that someone is going to the Minnesota State Fair without pause. And then on the 94th, I can’t hold back tears. Remembering our family’s plans to go there on August 30th that year. Plans that death interrupted.

I can watch Samuel play with Lego’s for hours. And in one moment that is similar to all before it, I can feel grief overtake my body. Missing that my son does not experience the grandfather my dad would have been. And I have to leave the room to free the sobs. A relationship that death prevented.

Hurricane Katrina came the night my dad died. I missed the whole event. Instead of watching the news, sitting in a funeral home with my mom making decisions a fifty six year old woman was not planning on making. For the husband she had known for forty years.

That is what death does.

As Paul said to the Corinthians “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

Death is an enemy. Never part of God’s creation.

Death entering by the door cracked open by evil.

I wonder if some of you are reading this saying, “But get to the good part. Don’t forget that death has been conquered.”

I want to linger here. For a moment. Enough to be uncomfortable.

Long enough to not confuse our knowledge of the good news with an acquiesce that death is our friend.

Long enough to glimpse the dark vacuum death is if there had not been intervention.

Long enough to recognize that it is because of the very ugliness of death, that the good news can be so good.

When I let myself feel the extent to which I miss my dad, it is in the depth of those emotions that I can praise God unabashedly. That I can realize the magnitude of Christ not only dying, but conquering death by his resurrection.

I remember at my dad’s funeral a woman saying in a joyous voice “Just think, your dad is dancing on the streets of gold.” Without engaging the truthfulness of that statement, 48 hours after losing your father is not the time to hear that. (And in my years since have come to know that most people are well meaning and of course are not intending to say something harmful)

If I do not have room to grieve, how will I come to know that dancing on the streets of gold is something to desire.

If there is not space to be horrified at evil, how will I learn to fight for good.

If I am not face to face with the effects of death, how will I discover the sweet life that Christ offers.

This side of life we live with death. A reminder. “Sorrowful yet rejoicing” (2 Cor 6:10)

We are left with the hole. But my dad- he took one breath that was his last on this earth and in the next breath he was in the presence of God.

He never stopped living.

Today he twirls around with the six babies we never held.

Someday there will be new heavens and a new earth and “never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days or an old man who does not live out his years.” (Is 65:20)

It is because of the price of Christ life that I can “grieve not as one without hope.” Not a pie in the sky hope. But a hope with substance. A hope that took down death.

And for that my gratitude flows.

To Jesus who endured a far worse death. Whose life leaves us proclaiming “Where Oh death is your victory? Where Oh death where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55)

Yes, Jesus is my friend. But death, it will never be.

{top photo was taken a day or two before my dad passed away.}

PS.  A new friend (through this wonderful world of blogging) recently wrote about death.  Go read it now here →. Dust. Reading it along with reflecting on the anniversary of my dad’s death were mingling in my mind as I wrote.

Linking today with:

Soli Deo Gloria