It has been more than a year since my wife, Barbara, died after a long period of illness. I held her hand the morning she passed away, and all I could think to say was, “Please, God, take care of her.” It was the first day of spring.
This rudimentary expression of my belief in resurrection was the best I could come up with at this deeply painful moment. The charge nurse interrupted me after several minutes, quietly and carefully telling me that I needed to leave so the hospital could “take care” of Barbara. Since that time, a day has not passed when I do not think of my wife and miss her.
Is death the end?
But there is more: I still sense her presence in a real way. I am not referring to a dream state, an over-active imagination, the appearance of ghosts, hallucinations, hearing voices or a private séance but a strong feeling that there still is a bond between us that even death cannot shatter.
There still is a bond between us that even death cannot shatter.
When I express this to friends who have also recently lost a loved one, they assure me that I have not fallen off my theological rocker. They know the connection I’m describing. One person told me that she feels her husband’s nearness even though he died 12 years ago.
Frequently, our society treats death as the ultimate ending: a period at the end of a sentence; something to process and move on from. In her poem “Troth,” Emily Dickinson expresses this post-death cleaning house as, “The sweeping up of the heart,/ And putting love away/ We shall not want to use again/ Until eternity.” But eternity is too long to wait to revisit a lifetime of intimacy, friendship and sharing, and I have found that God in Christ can provide ways to keep love alive now.
The presence of absence
Barbara’s memorial service was on Pentecost Sunday in the church we served before I retired. We chose that date because it was the earliest we could assemble our large family, and more importantly, because she often expressed a particular affinity for the Holy Spirit. She was a person who had a strong interiority and was able to depend on what the author of Ephesians calls “the inner person” (3:16).
Eternity is too long to wait to revisit a lifetime of intimacy, friendship and sharing, and I have found that God in Christ can provide ways to keep love alive now.
One text that I read during the service is often used during memorials: “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus God will bring with him those who have died” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). This verse assures us that our loved one is not lost, despite the intense pain caused by death. Furthermore, our prayers asking God to take care of them are answered through the risen Lord.
The resurrection account in John 20 also indicates that Jesus’ followers could continue to experience his presence even after death. Mary recognizes Jesus in a real way when he calls her by name at the empty tomb. When she embraces him, he tells her to release him as he has entered a different dimension. He later appears to all the disciples in the upper room, where he helps Thomas to overcome his skepticism (John 20:24-29). Later, when he appears a third time by the lake, they do not have to ask who he is. They know he is the Lord (John 21:12-14).
A Grief Observed
In his book A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis struggles to describe how he experienced the presence of his wife Helen Joy after her death. Lewis does not hesitate to name what believers endure after death and the pain he felt personally, honestly raising doubts about God’s intentions. This was difficult for him to admit because, as his stepson wrote in the introduction to the book, Lewis was a theologian known for his acuity of reason and strong faith.
Lewis describes how difficult it was, for example, to go to local places where he and Joy were especially happy. But the location was not the whole of it. Even though she was gone, she was as real as the sky overarching everything. He knows somehow that he can experience her presence as a kind of “meeting.” She is there, just as much as any other fact.
Extensive grief, he argues, does not link us with the dead but casts them off from us. Yet, over time, a process opens that allows us to be present with them every day, not just through finding certain precious objects or driving to familiar locations, but through an actual presence that revivifies an ongoing relationship.
Barbara and I used to spend time together in our house without actually being together. She would work downstairs making arrangements for her gift shop, and I upstairs, reading, researching and writing. Yet we were both fully aware of the other’s presence, enjoying it and even reveling in it.
I think that kind of presence is still available after death, even though I cannot easily describe it, any more than I know what it means to believe that love is eternal.
