My father, when he was engaged to my mother, was suddenly gripped with the most horrible fear that he would lose her to death — to the point that he could barely restrain his tears. At the time, this seemed ridiculous. His health was on the frail side, and she was full of life and strength and youth and beauty.

A few years later, she was diagnosed with a serious neuromuscular disease. He has struggled with giving her to Jesus over the years since. It has given him a unique tenderness and brokenness that I so love in him.

God has been gracious and her disease has faded into as close to remission as it can. But recently she suffered a heart attack. His blood pressure so skyrocketed that he ended up in the bed next to her in the ER. (In a silly way, this seems so romantic, sort of like two hearts beating as one.) Since my childhood, I’ve prayed that God would take both of them together, since I cannot fathom one without the other. When I got the call about them being both in the ER, I told the Lord that I would thank Him if this was His answer to my prayer — but did it have to be now?

They are both fine now, pretty much fully recovered. Ah, but if possible, they seem to appreciate each other even more…

I was with my sister-in-law when she said goodbye to my brother, the love of her life and her best friend. It was wrenching and beautiful to hear her pray with him and to see her let him go. My heart still aches.

Not me. Not me. Not yet.

This made my eyes tear up as I read it. So very true.

I commented on another post that we just went thru a similar fear, so I can relate to the immediacy of the fear of parting. But you’re exactly right– none of us gets out alive, and we will all face this eventually. Thank you for the reminder.

-JimBob

Keep trusting the Lord, and thank you for your reflections and comments.

thank you.

I appreciated your honesty in facing this factor few of us want to think about, much less talk about. I am at the stage where I am about to lose my father to cancer. It is stupid, I know, but frankly to me my father was bigger than life. If there was someone I thought would be immortal, it would have been him. But reality has intruded in the form of cancer.

Even though everyone loses their parents, like you said, our brains are hardwired against fully integrating the possibility. I still find myself grasping at unbelief and plunging into denial even as I watch him get weaker and weaker.

I see the toll on my mother as well as she is more directly experiencing the reality of which your wife’s experience was a shadow. That is the tragedy of sucessful marriages, I guess. Your bonds together grow stronger each year until they are almost ripped apart by death. The pain of separation is worse the more you become one.

If the resurrection is not true, then life truly is absurd.

I wrote a meditation on my father’s cancer here in case you are interested. The experience parallels yours in many ways.

Again, thanks for sharing.