A dear sister in the congregation I pastor departed this life last night, Friday the 20th of April, in the Year of Our Lord 2012. Her name is Janet Biggart. Her husband preceded her into glory about a year ago. Now they rejoice with each other and with the saints triumphant in resplendent glory. High were her hopes. Great was her faith. Happy was her end. And she met it well.
I used to wish for a quick death. I hoped it would be relatively painless as well. I always thought of being caught in an explosion, or a car crash, or something sudden arising from one of the more dangerous sports I used to enjoy. I hoped this way because I was wanted to avoid pain. I thought this way because I was forgetting what I was praying for all the times I said the nunc dimittis at the end of Compline. Hundreds of times I asked "For a peaceful night and a perfect end..."
I was (in part) echoing the words of St. Simeon found in the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. He was wishing for a good death now that he had seen the Savior. What an odd and offensive thing to wish for in our time! I am surely going to accused of being morbid and obsessed with death. If you know me, you know a morbid fascination with death is not a vice I war against. If anything it is an energizing reality for me. Up until the mid-20th Century, death was a much more present reality to everyone everywhere than it is now. The throw-away phrases 'keeping short accounts' and 'live every day as if it were your last' come to mind. Not because I think we should all proceed with whatever debauchery and decadence appeals to us, but for the sake of getting and keeping 'things in order' with the people that form the integral webs of our lives.
Janet Biggart spent well the days she had remaining to her. She was already in failing health when her husband, Terry, departed. She knew her time was finite in the short and the long of it. A hundred days or a hundred years, she knew she was mortal. She embraced the "Gift of Men." God answered the prayer of St. Simeon, the nunch dimittis, for Janet. She was given the grace of a good death. To not only face death with courage and hope, but live well throughout the process. Her deeply Christian embrace of mortality gave her supernatural traction and power in her final times.
These days, I think a little cancer might do. 6 months or so would be enough. Enough time to say and do everything that needs to be done, in case I've left things undone. (Which I almost certainly will.) I would also prefer my wife to have preceded me, lest she have to be alone.
In case I do indeed get my earlier wishes, I'm trying to keep accounts not 'as short' as possible, but 'as full.' I fail a lot at this.
God help me to walk as well as Janet Biggart, in both the living and the dying.
I used to wish for a quick death. I hoped it would be relatively painless as well. I always thought of being caught in an explosion, or a car crash, or something sudden arising from one of the more dangerous sports I used to enjoy. I hoped this way because I was wanted to avoid pain. I thought this way because I was forgetting what I was praying for all the times I said the nunc dimittis at the end of Compline. Hundreds of times I asked "For a peaceful night and a perfect end..."
I was (in part) echoing the words of St. Simeon found in the beginning of the Gospel of Luke. He was wishing for a good death now that he had seen the Savior. What an odd and offensive thing to wish for in our time! I am surely going to accused of being morbid and obsessed with death. If you know me, you know a morbid fascination with death is not a vice I war against. If anything it is an energizing reality for me. Up until the mid-20th Century, death was a much more present reality to everyone everywhere than it is now. The throw-away phrases 'keeping short accounts' and 'live every day as if it were your last' come to mind. Not because I think we should all proceed with whatever debauchery and decadence appeals to us, but for the sake of getting and keeping 'things in order' with the people that form the integral webs of our lives.
Janet Biggart spent well the days she had remaining to her. She was already in failing health when her husband, Terry, departed. She knew her time was finite in the short and the long of it. A hundred days or a hundred years, she knew she was mortal. She embraced the "Gift of Men." God answered the prayer of St. Simeon, the nunch dimittis, for Janet. She was given the grace of a good death. To not only face death with courage and hope, but live well throughout the process. Her deeply Christian embrace of mortality gave her supernatural traction and power in her final times.
These days, I think a little cancer might do. 6 months or so would be enough. Enough time to say and do everything that needs to be done, in case I've left things undone. (Which I almost certainly will.) I would also prefer my wife to have preceded me, lest she have to be alone.
In case I do indeed get my earlier wishes, I'm trying to keep accounts not 'as short' as possible, but 'as full.' I fail a lot at this.
God help me to walk as well as Janet Biggart, in both the living and the dying.
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