Discovering Life through Death

It’s been over 6 weeks since my Opa died, a 6 weeks filled with many new things, a bit of transition and whole heck of a lot of busy-ness. And yet, that event in my life hasn’t lost its freshness, nor all its meaning.

We see and experience many great and horrible things in this world, and I count myself graced to not have known most of the horrors, and to have experienced many of the great. Yet the death of someone I loved dearly opened a whole different set of emotions and realities unbeknownst to me. It burst the bubble of life as I knew it, or perhaps, illusioned it. You know, the life filled with a never ending set of great milestones and things to achieve and be. The life filled with, well…you know…life. And then death came knocking at the door. And what I realized was this: life really isn’t Life until we understand death.

It’s like the old Hegelian philosophy that one cannot know oneself until one knows the Other. In much the same way (or perhaps quite differently) I think God designed us to not quite understand life, or have a real longing for eternity, until we have understood death and the finite. We also have trouble truly appreciating beauty when we know nothing of ugliness (such is the story of Good and Evil). The one defines the other.

What did I learn then, about death that will now define my Life? Well I’m still on a learning curve, but here are a few.

One of the things that marked me most was that my Opa ‘Koetjes’ (Opa ‘Cows’) as we fondly called him as kids, never achieved many of the things this world calls ‘extraordinary’ or ‘great’. By most standards, he was quite the average man, with quite the average life.

My Opa was born in 1925 into a large family and had 10 other siblings. His family worked hard to make ends meet, and lived in an unbelievably tiny house. My Opa was a young lad when the War hit, and he had many an adventurous (and sorrowful) tale of sneaking around the German occupiers. He didn’t get much schooling, and instead worked hard (even at one point selling klompen (wooden shoes)). But he was an avid reader and quite smart in his own right. Shortly after the War, he met my Oma at a youth conference of some sort, and as the story goes, was quite smitten indeed. They exchanged letters and visits, and pretty soon my Opa proposed. However, a few strings were attached to the ‘yes’, including that my Oma was an only child and therefore her father wanted her future husband to marry into the family and come live and work on their family farm. So off my Opa went to marry his girl and work on a farm in the east, something he knew little of.

Fast forward a few years, and he had 5 kids, worked hard on the farm while trucking nights delivering pigs to the slaughter houses. After years of hard labor, he became overwrought, had a nervous breakdown and would never work the way he had before again. Instead, the Opa I knew as a child would cook delicious vegetable soup with mini-meatballs, would drive around visiting neighbors and selling pots of French honey, and on occasion would takes us kids with him, a trip which often included a stop for some fresh liverwurst, a great treat!

 In his 70s my Opa became totally deaf. An outgoing man who always loved to chat had his communication severely limited. In his last years we would communicate with him via email, written notes and even an iPad.

He passed away at the ripe age of 86.

No, the man had no record achievements in his lifetime. In fact, he had some very sad things happen to him, not all of which I mentioned here. Yet for all the tragic things Opa went through, he could have become a very bitter, disillusioned and depressed man. But never did the man cease cracking his jokes and loving to make people laugh.

Opa had about 250 people attend his funeral (including 5 children, 25 grandchildren and 30+ great-grandkids). And what did people do? They talked about what he meant to them. Not once were his lifetime ‘achievements’ mentioned or hailed. But the people whose lives he touched? Yes that was mentioned, and was overwhelmingly evident in the amount of people that came to his funeral, and the large amounts of condolence cards my Oma received. You see, Opa loved to tell people about Jesus, especially if they didn’t know him. He led Sunday school for children in his younger days (some of which remembered him and came to his funeral) and later after his nervous breakdown, would pass his time visiting with his neighbors and any he was selling honey to, and would ask them if they knew Jesus. He would pray for his family, loved his grandchildren and great-grandchildren dearly, and when he knew that he was dying, he was concerned not about where he was going, but about leaving ‘us’ behind. At his funeral he didn’t want the preacher to talk about his own life, but wanted people to hear about the answer to True Life.

His life was about relationship. Relationship with others, and relationship with God. And that was all that was left to show or hold any value upon his death. Talk about having our professions, careers, finances and everything else not matter!! It made me think: am I chasing after Life, in all its abundance, or have I just been caught in a spinning wheel of a life that no one will remember or care much about.

Was my Opa perfect? By no means! He was just as unique, quirky and yes at times quite as broken in his own right as anyone else. But in the end, that wasn’t what mattered.

One of the things I asked Opa shortly before he passed away, was if he had any words of wisdom to pass on to us young folk? He shook his head, and said, “Read Proverbs 3:5-6. One thing I’ve come to know in this life, is that I haven’t known or understood much at all, and that nothing is ever quite what is seems.”

So, in the wake of death, I’m asking myself, what is Life? And am I truly living it?

(Here's a song to go with my ponderings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqUsAHTUPTU&feature=fvst