To Be Part of the Ocean

I'm sitting at the soundboard at the Front Porch, a concert is underway, and I just finished the last pages of Mitch Albom's 1997 book, Tuesdays with Morrie.

It's gotten a lot of acclaim, this book has. Everybody who reads it speaks highly of it, as a heart-wrenching account of an author's renewed relationship with a favorite professor in the midst of his ALS death throes. It's a true story, and it wants us to know that you're not ready to live until you're ready to die.

Personally, until the very end I wasn't that touched. No doubt it's well-written, sensitive, and thoughtful. But I considered putting it away several times before I reached the end, because all its platitudes about life and love and relationships and facing the end seemed a little cliche to me. A little overplayed... lacking poetry, poignancy, or both.

I think there may be a reason. Having spent my whole life in the Church, the subject of death is not entirely uncommon. Even if it's not a pleasant topic, it's nevertheless quite prescient to the church's theology. And for all its failings, somehow the Church did manage to instill in me a strong impression of the importance of love, relationships and living selflessly.

I was forced to consider the perspective of those raised without those insights. Those who may bristle at the raw consideration of death, and who have few opportunities to realign their thoughts to what is eternal. For them, I suppose I'm not surprised that Tuesdays with Morrie would be such an impactful book, and a truly beneficial one at that.

These were my thoughts at the half-point. But like I said, as it reached the end I started to feel differently. One passage that forced me to stop for a moment was a story told by the old professor himself. It was about a wave riding along the surface of the water, enjoying life. Until he notices what's happening to the waves ahead of him, as they crash violently on the shore. When the wave begins to panic, the next wave over comforts him by the notion that he is not a wave at all, he is part of the ocean.

As I said, this made me stop. Does it seem as silly to God for a human to fear the death that lies ahead, as it seems to a human for a wave to fear the shore? I've read a little about Buddhism lately, and their concept of "no-self". It is the process of getting rid of self-thoughts, to understand that "self" is an illusion, and that it is our membership in the universe, in humanity, in family, that really matter.

Don't think I'm buying into all this wholesale, but it is certainly stretching me.

And the whole topic brings me back over and over again to my nearest experience with death. About a year and half ago, just after our third wedding anniversary.

My wife Christina had an uncle who was essentially her father. Andrew Myers was brilliant, and proportionately eccentric for being brilliant. Few people have ever possessed greater potential. He was a doctor, and in his younger years gained a quick reputation in the ER for instant diagnosis. It was almost a shining. He could look at you, and tell what was wrong right away.

Although I never experienced this firsthand. My only hospital experience with Andrew Myers had him on the other end of the stethoscope.

As I said, it was about a year and a half ago. Andy's wife had just passed away six months prior, and he took a long downhill slide as a result. We all worried quite a bit about him... One might expect a bout of depression in his situation, but something else was bringing his health down drastically.

It didn't take long for his doctors to discover the cancer. Lung cancer. Our guess is that he knew he'd had it all along, but wanted nothing less than to be a cancer patient, subjected to wave after wave of destructive radiation. So he did what he could to alleviate the pain, and live his life while he could.

Fast-forward to the hospice room. When he was diagnosed, there was no doubt things would progress quickly, so there were few surprises that led us to this place... Christina and I together at Andy's side, or a fraction of Andy, anyway. The man we knew as a tall, robust individual was now a wisp of a man, with pure white hair and cheeks sunken severely beneath the oxygen tubes.

By many standards, I live a pretty colorful life. But it's also been fairly sheltered. In other words, until this point I'd never really witnessed death. Never really been there in the moment. And honestly, I could not have asked for a more precious introduction to humanity's greatest fear.

Andy had been mostly comatose during his short visit to the hospice, punctuated with short periods of looking around, or eking out a word or two. But in his final day, there was little to speak of. Christina and I stayed nearby, talking to him, holding his hands, and sharing warm conversations with friends and family who stopped in to visit.

The hospice nurse was nothing short of astounding. She was one of the most compassionate, encouraging and informative people I've ever encountered in the health care field. She told us how it would end. And we watched as it all unfolded.

His breathing became slower and slower, degenerating into intermittent gasps. And several other symptoms of passing matched the predictions perfectly.

But one blessing came to us that we didn't expect. Despite Andy's steady and unresponsive descent into darkness, his soul found the strength right before the end to open his eyes, and his mouth, as if he were witnessing something truly amazing. We held his hands a little tighter and smiled sadly to be part of such a breath-taking moment.

Then he closed his eyes again, to finish his breathing. The gasps got more and more sparse, and began to lift his chest as the effort became more and more intense. Then his chest would collapse, his chin would rise, the air would rush in sharply, and his body would rest for five seconds before it happened again. Then it was ten seconds. Despite their intensity, the breaths were thinning, and finally one gasp stopped midway, before Andrew Myers' body descended heavily into his bed. Christina and I squeezed his hands and looked at each other with emotions that don't fit into categories.

The nurse had asked us to inform her the moment he passed away, so I gave my wife a kiss and walked out into the hallway. I didn't have to walk far, because she was right nearby. Like I said, she was a wonderful nurse. She told me that we could take as long as we wanted with him before they began preparing his body for the funeral home. I questioned her about it, and she said some people take hours.

I returned to the room, and Christina and I sat and talked gently about Andy... trying to recall some of our happier moments with him. It seemed strange, mentally, to have casual conversation while a corpse is within arm's reach, but it also felt right in a way. I think we felt his presence more now, than we did when he was alive but comatose.

We prayed, and remarked to each other how relieved we were to know that Andy was with his Savior, whom he'd trusted in life. For although we mourn, we don't mourn like those who have no hope.

As I watched, and absorbed this new experience, and as I sit here to write out the story behind it, I am still a wave on the sea. I am moving, always darting in and out, never losing sight of the rocks ahead of me. But I am also part of the ocean, part of the larger picture that now holds Andrew Myers in the depths of its peace. Sometimes my heart can accept this, and sometimes it feels overwhelmed.

But despite the chaotic, the foreboding, the unknown, I can rest assured that in Christ, no fear is necessary. The sting of death is gone.