Death and Christmas
One of my side jobs is working as a hospital chaplain. Currently, I do this about one evening a month. I picked up an extra shift last week, and from the moment I came on duty, I was working with a sad situation.
The long and the short of it: “Bob” [name changed to protect privacy] got sick the evening of Thanksgiving, and was hospitalized that night. When I came on shift at 5pm on the following Monday, I was informed by the day chaplain that Bob had coded—his heart had stopped, and the doctors were working to resuscitate him. They were successful, but over the course of the night, it became obvious to the doctors and then to the family that Bob was not going to make it. By 4am, the family was asking for a priest to administer last rites before they turned off the ventilator.
I stayed with the family for the rest of the night (or morning, by this point). I was there with them when Bob’s wife and two sons made the decision to cease life support, when they talked to the doctor about their decision, and when the nurse disconnected the machine. Bob’s extended family, who had been there the whole night as well, milling around, trying to comfort one another and take in everything that had happened, all gathered around the bed at this point. From the moment the machine was off, everyone waited with him, somberly watching the monitor and saying goodbye to Bob.
In our cultural mythology, we have many different stories of what happens when a person dies. Many people believe that angels come to bring people to the hereafter, or that one sees a bright light, often with a voice or a presence that beckons them. Then there’s the image of the grim reaper, that morose personification of death as a tall being shrouded in black and carrying a scythe as it comes to collect souls. Even in our popular culture, there have been explorations of the event of death. One of my favorite TV shows was Dead Like Me (2003), which begins with the death of a young woman. After dying she finds herself in the role of a reaper, part of a bureaucratic organization that collects the souls of the recently deceased and shepherds them to the afterlife.
As I stood with Bob’s family by his bedside, I began to reflect on the connection between these cultural legends of ours and my current scenario. We hate to think of people dying alone. We prefer to believe that when we die, there is somebody or something—an angel, a voice, even a creepy skeleton in a robe with a giant sickle—that comes to be with us, to accompany us to whatever comes next. Even though Bob was unconscious, even though it was unlikely that he was even aware of anybody’s presence in that room (due to brain damage from lack of oxygen when he coded), once the decision was made to remove the life support, everyone waited there with him, saying their goodbyes, unwilling to let him die alone. I know that for myself, I hate to think about it, too. Once, working as a chaplain at the hospital in Baltimore, I held the hand of a woman as she died. She, too, was unconscious, and even if she knew I was there, she didn’t know me from Adam; but she had no family around, no friends, and I couldn’t let her die alone. So, I held her hand for about 45 minutes as her life ebbed away, just so she wasn’t alone.
So, what does this have to do with Christmas?
As Christians, we believe that the God who created the universe took on human form in the person of Jesus Christ. God did this in order to be fully present with us as people. In other words, so that we wouldn’t be alone. It’s something that both Christians and non-Christians alike fail to fully appreciate, I think. When we think about God, we often focus on what we get from it, what God does for us, how faith in God makes our lives better. Mere presence just doesn’t seem enough. It doesn’t decrease our suffering, it doesn’t make us happy, it doesn’t enable us to do anything we can’t do by ourselves. And yet, when it comes down to it, when we are faced with a dire situation like the end of our lives, the one thing we truly want more than anything is not to be alone.
The prophet Isaiah writes of a child named Immanuel (Isa 7.14), a name which literally means “God-(is)-with-us.” For Christians, we celebrate the holiday of Christmas as the day when the Creator of the universe put off heaven to put on flesh, to be Immanuel. In our evangelism, we too often forget this significant fact, or when we don’t, it’s received with ambivalence: so God became human to ‘be’ with us, so what?
Somewhere deep inside each of us is the need for companionship. It may not be essential to our survival, but it is essential to our happiness. We can’t bear to think of a loved one dying alone because inside ourselves that is also what we fear. With all the pain, the suffering, and the challenges we face in life, we need to be loved. It doesn’t make any of that go away, but somehow it makes it more bearable.
God understands this about us, even if we don’t always get it ourselves. It’s a jungle out there. There’s a lot of pain and heartache to be had. But even in the midst of joy and elation, it’s so much better if there’s someone to share it with. Even those of us who have the blessing of friends, family, community and spouse find ourselves occasionally feeling alone. Circumstances change, people come into and leave from our lives. We face separation from loved ones by death. Though we almost always have the comfort of having people around us, there are times in everyone’s life where we feel undeniably and inescapably alone. It is for those times, when we are hardest pressed and backed into the tightest corners, that God has become Immanuel.
This is the good news: no one has to die alone, and no one has to live alone.
Amen! Much love!