Death

Dear Abigail, 

I went to your third birthday celebration, but it was really weird, because you weren't there. Not only was it weird, it was wrong. And hard...

I've written this letter in my head for the last hours, and I thought finishing it here would help. I can't though, because it's too hard. 

And I can't stop thinking about death.

I was putting Zane to bed when my phone rang. I noticed that my friend Kathy had called, which was strange for a Sunday night. As I picked up the phone, I heard Jennifer's voice. It was a whisper. 

"Are you sitting down?"

What? I was so confused.

"Abigail's dead..."

My brain switched off. I clicked into practical mode.

Where are they? What did Kathy want? Where is Brandy?

I was putting my clothes on while I talked to her. I grabbed my keys and jumped into the van. The five minute ride to the hospital I prayed desperately.

I got to the hospital and waded through the people waiting in the hallway until I found Kathy. We leaned against each other. I was smack dab in the middle of a television show. None of it was real. 

When Brandy walked out of the room where Abigail was, my heart ripped in two. I'll never forget the look on her face. She walked toward me, and I gripped on to her. Her sobs ripped through both of us. I pulled back and said the only thing I knew to say.

Can I pray for you?

She nodded yes, and I folded her hands into mine.

Praise the Lord for Matthew 10 {...for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.} I have no idea what I said, but I remember imploring God as a Father who had also lost a child to comfort Brandy in the way that only He could.

We spun through that next week together. The whole band of girls and their kids. We cleaned, shopped for necessities, made food, cried buckets of tears, talked, laughed and at times, sat without saying a word.

We somehow got through it.

The next year was an amazing show of God's goodness and grace. 

And it was the hardest year in my friendship life. Hard to watch someone I love grieve in a way that defies words. 

And I've thought about death way more than I ever wanted to.

I heard my precious friend Kathy Leigh yelling at me through the phone "AMY!" in that way that she did. 

I'm standing in Times Square, right now! WHERE ARE YOU???

We would plot how we would live in New York together. Preferably SoHo. We would laugh, heads bent together over the stacks of shirts we were folding. It was a silly out of this world plan. I had a husband, she had a daughter. But in our little world, we'd live there, in an artistic nirvana. 

But see, she was in New York to go to Sloan Kettering for a last ditch effort at curing her recurring breast cancer. 

She was calling, from the middle of Times Square, to say

I'm not really fighting cancer. We're here, living in SoHo. Happy, silly, laughing, spinning through New York in our safe, make believe world. But where are you? You aren't here!

There were over 1,000 people at her memorial service. The last words from Kathy Leigh were unintelligible words scratched out on a piece of paper. It took her brother nearly a day to decipher them. But as he gripped the podium in front of those 1,000 people, he grinned her grin and said, "I figured out what she said...

I can see Heaven

I thought about my Aunt Ann, who, by the odd spin of the genetic wheel, I was the spitting image of. Not just in looks, but in walk, laugh, wit and insanity... nearly her perfect doppelganger.  So much so her children still find it hard to be around me at times.

She lost her life in a car accident.

I still hear her {our} laugh. I see her understanding eyes on me. She did understand me like no one else. When she left, I felt a little more alone in the world. Purely selfish. 

As I pondered this thing called death, I felt the need to get to the core of it. Again. Or maybe for the first time. When Abigail died. I needed to think about it a lot. I needed to steep myself in it. I needed to swim in the dark depths of it. Touch the reality of it. 

And I came to the same age old conclusions. 

It's real.

It's inevitable.

It's natural.

It's normal.

It's God's plan.

So how do we not despair? How do we not lose our lives to death?

Hope.

But our hope does not lie in the seen. It's lies in the unseen. In God. The Creator of the universe who's plan is complete. And perfect.

And through His immeasurable love for humankind offered His Son as a sacrifice to pay for the sin we all commit. Allowed Jesus to be tortured and murdered on a cross, so that our sins would be forgiven. Jesus took God's wrath due us because of our sin. And as we believe and put our faith and trust in this Perfect Gift, we are rescued and ransomed from the penalty of death. By Jesus and Jesus alone we are then allowed to spend eternity worshiping the God who by His grace and mercy saved us. 

That's hope. 

Death is not the end for us. It's the door by which we step into Christ's presence.

It's the way we get to look Him in His face and tell Him

thank you

as if that would suffice.

But it's all I have. 

That and my life. 

Which I freely offer to Him.

So these thoughts swirled around in my head as I stood in the dining room where streamers and balloons were hung in honor of a 3rd birthday celebration where the guest of honor was so obviously absent. 

I had stood in another dining room a year ago, looking up at balloons and streamers with the number 2 on them. How strange that life and death were so closely spaced. A 2 year old birthday party and then 2 days later, death.

I cried more at the birthday celebration than I did the entire week she died. It was grief backed up by a year's worth of grieving. There were 365 days of sadness built up. 

{and true to form, we laughed too. My friend Erica said, "I can't move. My feel are cemented to the floor." I said, though tears, "It's okay, Erica. I'm here. I'll help you..." And she said, "No really. My feet and legs are asleep from sitting cross legged too long. I can't feel anything. I can't move." Laughter through tears. My favorite}

It seems like making it through a year without your daughter should afford you the prize of getting your daughter back.

But it doesn't work that way. 

So He continues to sustain. And provide in ways that no one can understand. 

And as I think about death now, it's simply a natural end to life that God gives so graciously. And it's another way to honor and glorify Him through such indescribable pain. 

And the simple fact that we will dance with Abigail in Heaven gives me such peace.

I will hug Kathy Leigh again. I will feel Ann's hand smooth my hair again. I will see and love each person that trusted in Christ that I loved and lost.

And it spurns on this fire to spread this precious Gospel. Not just as a means of avoiding a very real and a very eternal hell, but also as a way to come to know a most precious Savior. To live with peace and passion in Him. To know and be known. To love and be loved. 

Oh, I love you, Lord. Thank you for your Son. Thank you for comfort. 

Your praises will always be on my lips.