Life and Death - the Sudden Paradox

This week has thrown me into a fit of thoughts, all racing through my head at once. Life, death, and the time in between are so closely related, intertwined in one fluid motion that neither constantly moves nor abruptly halts, but always carries away the old in the ebb and always brings in the new with the flow.

I spent the first three days of this week with an 83-year-old man in a hospital bed. He has lived a long life and has fulfilled the temporary needs of his family to the best of his ability. His memories are sharp and on occasion come hurling out of his mouth from somewhere before the war, if he can remember them. Many of his peers have moved beyond this life, but he only flirts with the invitation. This time in the form of an inguinal hernia, but there will surely be others. I wonder how he holds himself together, all 8 decades of him in that frail frame that shuffles when it walks. To him death seems natural, something that we never bring up just like we never bring up the sunset, only when it's spectacular but not just because we feel it coming. Of course the sun will set; that's just natural.

The next day I found myself in the company of an old friend whom I had not seen for years. He's married now and has a child, a little boy who cooed for us but cries for his mom. To feel his little weight in my arms and look into his bright eyes, I felt the newness of life, a light that had just been lit. Not like turning on a flashlight with year-old batteries or switching the light on in the bathroom at midnight, but like a brand new star that was just formed in the black emptiness of space by a great explosion of light and heat and power. Yes, I felt a power in that child. To him life seems natural, it's embedded in his veins and nerves and in every reflex and instinct in his body. Of course his star will shine; that's just natural.

The weekend finds me sitting in the emergency room with a man whose life dangled from a thread. It was nothing but the hand of God that plucked him from the furnace and left him breathing gently on the bed, waiting for sleep and a rest from the terrible night. I watch him looking at the ceiling and I wonder how life and death can come so close in a man of his age. The setting sun that seems so natural to the old and the morning light that radiates from the young met in a paradoxical dance in this man and left me reeling in their burning wake.

He's fine now, just as the 83-year-old and the baby, but I am left ruminating. How am I to comprehend this breach of the quintessential dichotomy? It leads me to ponder the significance of the relationship between spiritual life and death, the proximity of our souls with our Maker. I think this will take some time to mull over and study before I can put the pieces back together. In the meantime, I'll try going to bed before midnight.