When I was young, my father was a “funeral director” which is a fancy way of saying an undertaker or a mortician. Hence, I grew up with the notion of death around me all the time. If other kids told me that their dad was a doctor and then asked what my father did, I’d say, “My dad takes care of your dad’s mistakes!” My sense of humor seems perhaps a little “grave,” but I understood the temporal finality of death. In grade school some friends asked me if I was afraid of the dead people my dad worked with, to which I replied, “No, after all, they’re dead!” And “the dead are dead, and know not anything” (Ecclesiastes 9:5 paraphrased).
Nonetheless, the death of one who is near and dear to us provokes an angst, in spite of having been brought up on biblical verses promising eternal life after death. The first death in the family that I can recall was that of my maternal great-grandfather. I was only three, but I’d known him all of my short life, so somehow it has stuck with me.
The next loss I recall was my maternal great-grandmother, who died when I was nine years old. That loss I felt more vividly. It was then, I think, that I first heard my maternal grandmother say that her favorite verse was Revelation 21:4 – which she would paraphrase something like this, “and He shall wipe away EVERY tear from their eyes (heavy emphasis on the word every!) and there shall be no more death, sorrow, or pain, for the former things are passed away!”
The comforting promise in that passage became my favorite as well. Beginning in verse 3. “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Revelations 21:3-4 NRSVUE).
I was 18 when my maternal grandfather died. In the days following his funeral, my grandmother cried so much that she had an acute attack of glaucoma and was unable to see at all for two weeks. She lived the rest of her life with reduced vision, seeing everything as if peeking through a keyhole. Somehow knowing and loving the promise in Revelation 21 was not enough to quell her grief. Still, how much worse would it have been for her if she hadn’t had that assurance? When she died many years later, I clung to that promise with all my strength.
I have since lost both of my parents and a good many aunts, uncles, and cousins, not to mention sibling-in-laws and friends. Loss is painful, but promises like Revelation 21:4 give us strength and something to hope for. I hold that promise close.
I have needed it at every loss. I need it still. I will need it yet again. And I will claim it, always.