Family loss is not the end

This article isn’t going to be funny.
I don’t like disappointing my audiences, though, so I’ll at least give you a joke, and if you feel like skipping the rest of the article, that’s perfectly OK.
What did the farmer say when he lost his tractor?
“Ah, dang, I lost my tractor.”
OK, this is where it starts being not-funny.
My great-grandmother died here in Searcy on Tuesday, January 4th, 2005, right at two weeks after her 98th birthday. Things just aren’t very funny right now.
When a woman, or anybody for that matter, reaches a certain age, there comes with that age a certain realization by members of the family that she is not long of this world. Mom Baker was 90 years old when I was 13, and that realization hadn’t really come to me, nor had it come to much anybody else yet. She was still spry, active, full of the exact kind of energy that you don’t expect 90 year old women to be full of… And she still cooked! My goodness, could she still cook. I guarantee you that I am at least half of the size that I am today because of Mom’s cooking.
But then time kept on marching by, and with each successive visit to Mom’s house, Mom’s cooking got slower and less extravagant, and then one day it just disappeared altogether. I was not ready for that first time when I walked in to Mom’s and wasn’t greeted by 5 kinds of meat and a huge pot of macaroni and cheese.
Mom was supposed to be immortal. That was just how it was supposed to be. I was fortunate enough to have Mom around for my first 3 ½ years at Harding. Why did my sister not get that opportunity? She’ll be at Harding in the fall, why did Mom have to be taken before then?
There’s nothing as upsetting as watching the slow ravages of time on someone we love. My Aunt Elizabeth died the summer before my senior year of high school. I remember the last time I saw Aunt Elizabeth most vividly because she didn’t remember me at all. This was a woman who had taken care of me almost every day from when I was born until I was 3 years old and my family moved away from Arkansas. This was the Aunt Elizabeth who we did not leave Searcy without visiting for at least 3 hours. This was a woman who meant so much in my formative years, and here she was, frail and weak, sitting in her bed at the nursing home, looking into my eyes and searching for a name that simply would not come.
Mom’s mind never left her, but her body let her down. Mom was never happy about not being able to cook anymore. She remained insistent that everybody in her house was fed to the point of overflowing, but it broke her heart to not be able to feed us all herself. It broke my heart to see her in that pain that was simply a product of a long life.
It’s times like these that I wonder about the parts of Jesus’ life that aren’t in the gospels. How did Jesus deal with the inevitability of the eventual death of his family members? Zechariah and Elizabeth were already old when John the Baptist and Jesus were born, how old was Jesus when they were too old to move around on their own? How did Jesus take it when his uncle was too weak to lift objects around the home, much less young Jesus himself? What did Jesus feel when the people he loved so dearly were nearing the end of their mortal lives? Sure, he knew of the reward waiting for them, but still, the human side of Jesus, without a doubt, felt the bitter sting of the loss of a family member.
The tears still flow, and they still flow hard. The funeral was filled with words of comfort reminding us all of Mom’s long and rich life, but my heart still cried out, “Not long enough! Not rich enough!”
There’s not a whole lot that can be said or done that can make the pain that comes with death any less. Those of us who are in the faith, however, have an advantage over those of the world. I know, in my heart, mind, and soul, that Mom Baker has got it better now than she ever did in this world. I know that suffering is no longer a part of her experience, in any sense. I know that she truly is immortal now. These things still don’t cover up every hurt, but they certainly take the edge off.
We hinge our lives so heavily upon the lives of others. This is understandable, of course, and I am not at all saying we should all withdraw into some sort of hermit's shell, detaching our hearts from everyone we come in contact with. What I am saying is that, at least personally, it's incredibly stinking hard to get ready for the inevitable detachment of death that comes with... well... life.
One of the less annoying aspects of The Lion King is the idea of the circle of life. Not a new one by any means, but until 1991, it didn't have a memorable Tim Rice and Elton John song to go along with it. We are born, we live, we die, and we become food. That's fine. What throws us off is that the circles that the people we love create don't begin or end at the same time ours do. We have to keep introducing ourselves to new people to occupy spaces in our lives, and we have to keep saying goodbye to the people that have gone on ahead and left us behind with the new guys. And that is very hard.
I’ll never stop missing Mom Baker, but hopefully I can keep her alive by spreading the love I had for her and she for me to the others who come into my life.