They were always there.
We ate meals together. We laughed together. We fought. We reconciled. And we endured.
We were family.
We were friends.
Then came the tap on the shoulder and the gentle words in hushed tones. Or the phone call prefaced with, “I have bad news” and followed by some version of “he’s gone” or “she’s gone.”
They were always there. And then they were gone. Forever.
My earliest memories of emotional experiences with human death came when I was in college. Let’s just say the early 1980s were awash with “bad news.”
In 1982 it was Bart Allen, a childhood friend in Marianna, and Papaw, my mother’s father.
The kind-hearted and always jovial Papaw had lived a full life – nearly 80 years – but it still seemed surreal to know he was gone.
Bart, who was just 18 days older than me, had lived for less than two decades. He was a super athlete and a fun guy to hang around with, and we all thought he had a bright future. The brain tumor didn’t seem to care about such things.
In 1983 it was my father and, a few months later, his mother.
Dad was in his mid-50s when he died. After the first stroke, he tried to quit smoking, but with mixed results. And, it seems, the damage was already done.
Nannie, as we called her, lived with us the last few years of her long life. Before that, we often spent the night at her house, which was just two blocks from ours. She broke the law only once that I’m aware of – when she let me drive her car those two blocks before I had my license.
Dad and Nannie. Gut-wrenching times two.
In 1984 it was my cousin, Greg Young. Car wreck. He was just one year older than me, the life of every party, and my constant companion at family gatherings in Brinkley, McCrory, or Cotton Plant. He once caught a fish in pond using a toy fishing pole and no bait. Now he, too, was gone.
I knew about death before any of those folks died. But it wasn’t real to me until it started hitting the people closest to me. People I’d known my whole life. Older people who had shaped who I was and who I would become. Younger people who were my peers.
Still, I can’t say I spent much time contemplating my death.
Back then, death was considered part of life. You took the punch in the gut. You reminded yourself that your day eventually would come. And soon you moved on. Before long, you were acting invincible again.
Death? Yeah, it’s a real thing. But it happens to other people, not me.
In my quiet moments, however, I knew that was a lie. It’s just that living the lie was easier than confronting the truth.
Now we’re told science is “on the verge” of defeating sickness and, therefore, death.
Don’t believe it.
It’s just a worldview thing. The prospect of disintegrating into worm food, the worldview of most atheists and many agnostics (of which I once was one), isn’t that appealing.
The alternative? Run from it. Ignore it. Deny it. Or, if you have enough money, fight it. Figure out, in other words, how to solve “the problem” of aging and death.
Like countless others throughout the centuries, plenty of men and women today are consumed with the dream of immortality. Several billionaires and scientists, in fact, are financing labs and companies that aim to “reverse aging” and “end sickness.” Someday, they promise, people will die only by choice or accident.
One of the scientists is David Sinclair, an acclaimed molecular biologist and co-founder of such companies as Life Biosciences, which is “on a mission to reverse age-related diseases” with what it calls “epigenetic restoration.” But the vision of such companies and several related longevity labs is much broader than curing diseases or even extending lifespans.
“What is the upward limit?” Sinclair asked in his 2019 bestseller, Lifespan: The Revolutionary Science of Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To. “I don’t think there is one. Many of my colleagues agree. There is no biological law that says we must age.”
Sinclair and other longevity advocates talk about improving everyone’s “quality of life” not just the length of our lives, and I’m all for that. So, yes, please find cures for glaucoma, cancer, dementia, and the dang arthritis in my right ankle. But eradicating aging, and therefore death, is their stated goal.
At the root of it, I suspect many simply are afraid of what might happen to them when they die – that they really might become worm food (or worse). Thus, they want to postpone death for as long as possible – forever if they can.
They can’t.
Bryan Johnson, a tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist, advocates a “don’t die” philosophy and has referred to himself as the “healthiest person on the planet.” Yet, he, too, will die. And, sadly, he announced earlier this year that he’s been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease.
Personally, I don’t want to live forever. Even if it’s biologically possible, as Sinclair argues, prolonged physical well-being brings no promise of happiness, joy, contentment, or peace. And I can have those even if I have arthritis in my ankle. I can have those even if my physical body dies. Most importantly, I can have them after my physical body dies.
Followers of Jesus know that death in this life is a doorway to something eternal, and the quality of that new and final phase of existence is entirely dependent upon the company we will keep when we get there.
If we choose Jesus, we get to spend eternity in the very essence of love.
If we reject Jesus, on the other hand, we spend it in the total absence of love. To me, that’s a great definition hell.
It’s our choice.
The challenge, as I see it, is to keep living – not just existing as far too many of us do, but really living – while we wait on that transition.
Physical death will come soon enough, whether we’re 8 or 80 or 800. In the meantime, followers of Jesus can embrace the life we’re given and the Kingdom purpose that comes with it. Serve others. Share the hope that lives within us. Keep being Jesus to the world around us.
If we happen to be a molecular biologist, that purpose might include finding cures for diseases that extend and improve our lives and the lives of others. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves: We still won’t live forever. At least not in the body we’re living in right now. We all will die. In the meantime, we must decide how to live and, more importantly, who we want to spend time with once death inevitably comes.
Resources: If you’re interested in living your best life before you die, here are two recommendations to help with that quest.
“Not Dead Yet,” the podcast hosted by Ben Sasse and Chris Stirewalt. Sasse, a former US Senator and college administrator, has stage-four pancreatic cancer, and that reality provides the context for the interviews he and Stirewalt conduct with their fascinating guests.
The Sunset Season: Aging with Grace, Joy and Purpose, by Steve Graves. Steve tackles the myth that aging is a problem to be solved and provides a framework for making it a calling to live.
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