It’s been 3 years since I woke to this day in 2018. I remember it well.....Chuck had been on hospice for 3 months almost to the day.....he had fished on the dock the day before and finished a tough week of struggle. But that Monday morning as I climbed out of bed early to spend time with God, I stopped at the foot of the bed and watched him breathe. I remember thinking, “He’s breathing better....I think he’s past last week’s struggle”. I shut the door quietly, fixed a cup of coffee and turned my favorite lamp on next to the old worn out chair with a hole in the upholstery I had sat in for 17 years. It had been about half an hour that God and I chatted that morning when I felt a strong urging to go wake Chuck up. As I opened the bedroom door, I knew. I just knew. I went and sat on the edge of the bed next to him.....his arm was still warm....and peace was written all over his face.
Interesting how Joy and Grief can occupy ones heart at the same time. But it can. And it does. And it did.
I stroked his beard, held his hand that wore that scratched-up gold ring on his left finger I had placed there many years before. And with mixed tears, thanked him for being such a wonderful husband and friend to me over the years. I told him how jealous I was of what he was experiencing with God at that very moment. I must admit, when we married 20+ years earlier, we didn’t really know God all that well. But we came to know Him living in the quietness next to a lake.
Life slowed down at that moment....and I didn’t want this moment to end.
In those last three months of Chuck’s life, we were given the gift of Time. Time to talk about how the grave is simply a place for our bodies....the vehicle that got us through this life on earth.....but wasn’t where our soul would reside.
We had many good conversations.....talked about how each Season of our life is necessary. How we humans are much like the trees and flowers.....we bloom with newness in the Spring....full of energy....full of beauty. Then the harshness of the Summer sun tempts to make life hard.....burn the edges of our newness and the struggles of life attempts to knock us down and hurt us. We look older because of the harshness of the sun (life) beating down on us....no longer as beautiful as we once were in the Spring. But what the summer sun does do is make us stronger and fight harder. We’re stronger than we were in the Spring because we’re fighting for survival from the Summer sun.
And then Fall arrives.....the leaves are more brittle....leathery from the fight of Summer.....and suddenly, we become like Spring again....our leaves/lives change into these beautiful colors ...brilliant reds and yellows and we now understand the meaning of life. We welcome the soft cooler breezes on our burnt skin and are much wiser than we once were.
We start to lose the fight of hanging onto the limb of the tree....we feel ourselves weakening....and we know, Winter is right around the corner. And then we feel ourselves letting go of the limb.....and falling much like a parachuter falls from the sky and slowly floats to the ground. We may be on the ground looking up into the sky, but we’re still alive. And it’s from that vantage point, we welcome, staring up into the Winter sky, our final destiny. And we feel the energy draining from our bodies.....until beautiful red of Fall is now brown.....and dissolves into the ground until Winter is over and Spring arrives once more. The nutrients from our death reappear in new growth.
And the fact that God never had to make the leaves go from green to red is not lost on me. There’s no purpose that I know of that He couldn’t have made it go from green to dead. But for our sake.....for our eyes to witness the cycle of life and beauty.....He “created” that leaf to go through seasons.....just like He created us to do...
Just because He loves Us.
Happy Heavenly Birthday, Chuck.
I will always love you.
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