I feel like my brain is about to fall out of my head. All afternoon I have been in the library studying for my midterm in Christianity in Antiquity. That test is tomorrow. I finally had to take a break. I’m reasonably well prepared for it, but I have been very distracted this week.
That’s because on Monday I received a phone call that I could have never predicted. My aunt Jane, my dad’s youngest sister, was found dead in her apartment. It looks to be of natural causes, something sudden like an aneurysm or heart attack. I was in disbelief when I heard. She has been in my thoughts and prayers a lot lately. She has three kids, all older than me, who are about to begin new phases of their lives. Both of her daughters are getting married this summer, and her son will be going to Iraq this fall.
The last time I saw her was over Thanksgiving in 2004 in New Orleans. I think that was the second thing I tried to figure out, after struggling to get past the initial shock and the sorrow regarding what her kids now have to go through. We used to live very near each other, back when I lived in south Florida. She moved there not long after getting divorced and close to the time when my grandfather died. I remember her being the one to console me during that time. My dad and I grieve differently, always have, and my mom was busy attending to my grandmother. That left aunt Jane to be there for me. I was eight years old and I was embarrassed that I was crying. She consoled me and assured me I was no less a man for shedding tears over the death of a man that I loved.
I won’t be able to attend the funeral, which is a shame. It will be in Memphis, the place where her heart always seemed to be regardless of where she happened to be living. Next week I’m going to go down to central Florida and spend some of my spring break with my grandmother. It was something I was considering doing anyway, but now it has taken on a very different tone.
You know it’s scary; I almost called my aunt on Monday afternoon, before I learned about any of this. I was on the phone with my grandmother, asking if it would be alright to come by for a few days, and in passing she mentioned that she hadn’t heard from Jane in a few days. I responded by saying that I hadn’t talked to her in a long time either and that, in fact, I didn’t have her new phone number since she moved out of New Orleans (pre-Katrina) and back to Memphis. My grandmother almost gave me that number, but then for some reason she didn’t. We must have got to talking about something else; I’m not really sure. As I’ve thought more and more about that, I realize that I’m not sure when I would have called. My mind soon got carried away with all the possibilities, one being that I could have ended up calling when my cousin Lindsay was first discovering what had happened. I selfishly thank God that He spared me of this horror.
Every time someone close to me dies I feel that much closer to my own death. And even though I know where I’m going when that time comes I still get a feeling I don’t like. It’s unlike any other feeling. Maybe it’s because I know that someday, should God grant me even tomorrow, I will more than likely have to see my parents and remaining grandparents die. Maybe even my sister or wife or, Lord spare me, my own children. I think the time we spend here on earth will feel infinitely longer than our time in heaven for all eternity, all because of the presence of pain and loss in this reality. That really doesn’t make any sense when you examine the ideas involved (mostly because I doubt there is ‘time’ per se in heaven, and I’m not sure how our capacity to ‘feel’ will be affected either), but I think you know what I’m trying to communicate. For now, all I can do is rely on the assurance of hope from Christ’s own lips: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!”
