When Is Someone Ready to Die?

I am twenty-nine years old and I have attended nearly two dozen funerals. I have said goodbye to grandparents, friends, relatives, and acquaintances. I consider myself blessed to still have so many people in my life, so many funerals I have not had to attend. I consider myself blessed to still be alive to attend the funerals of others, but I don't consider funerals a blessing. I don't want to say goodbye. I don't want to mourn, and I don't want to be confronted with the ugly reality of the people they've left behind. Does this sound selfish? Absolutely. It is without a doubt a selfish sentiment expressed by someone who has rarely had to experience the true pain of the people who are closest to the deceased. On Saturday, I had a new experience with these realizations and what it means when we say goodbye. On Saturday I attended the funeral of a friend who was so much more than a friend. She was a Christ-follower, a wife, a mother, a sister, a crusader, and so much more. She was a living, breathing example of the kind of faith I want to have and the kind of determination I want to express, and I'm still stunned that something as minute as her own mortality has managed to take her away.

When I think about Debbie, I think about her unbreakable faith. I think about how often we hear people say "When I die, I want to have nothing left to offer because that will mean I used every gift God gave me." It's an amazing sentiment full of compassion and dedication to His plan and His work. Yet I think Debbie is a perfect example of how much more I would want to say.

When I die, I want my children to be grown, happy, safe, and settled. The first time I cried over Debbie's death was not because of her death directly, but because of the family she left behind. She wanted to raise her children. She wanted to be a mother. Given the choice, I have to believe she would still be here today with her husband and son.

When I die, I want everyone to know I am ready. I want to have achieved what I set out to achieve in my work, and I want my family and friends to know that I am happy and ready to return to the Lord. I told my senior pastor how lost I felt over Debbie's death, and he told me that the hardest part of life is being separated from the Lord. The natural follow-up to this statement would then be that the best part of death is being reunited with the Lord, but I want whomever I leave on earth to know that when I return to the Lord, I am ready to return.

When I die, I want my husband to be ready for me to go. I want him to be a man of faith, but I also want him to be completely aware of how much I love him, how grateful I am for him, and how sure I am that we will be reunited in heaven. I know that Debbie and Jason were separated far too young, but I also know they will be together again one day.

My list could go on, but how can we ever think of everything? I want the world I leave behind to be a better place. I want to know that somewhere along the way I made life better for someone else. I want to know my family, my friends, and my dogs will be able to celebrate more than mourn. I don't need to be famous and I don't need memorials in my honor. If forty years pass and no one remembers who I am, that's okay, too. But I want to leave my mark. I don't want a headstone or plaque. I want to have worked in a wife that will continue to help people. I want to leave a  legacy of love behind.

I think about all of this and the amazing work Debbie did, and I know she did so much in so little time. She was an activist, a mother, a believer, and I can't bring myself to believe she was ready to die. I have no way of  knowing for sure, so all I can do is look at what she left behind. In listening to my senior pastor again at her funeral he said, "When I heard she had died, I looked directly to the Lord and asked, 'Where are you in all of this?'" Where is He? Why did He take her away so soon? I don't know the answer. I don't know where God was in Debbie's life nor in her death. But I know where he is now. He is with her survivors. He is with her husband and son. He is with her friends, her coworkers, and all of the other people she left behind. I say all of this because it brings me to my final desire. When I die, I want the people in my life to be ready to move on without me.

When I think of Debbie, I think of how she survived her sons. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around the level of grief and sadness she must have experienced, and I pray my family and I will never experience that kind of hurt. But Debbie survived. She took what happened to her oldest son and she made that her life's work. She dedicated herself that much more to her family, her work, and her church. She continued to live her life in a way that I can't even begin to comprehend, and that is just one more reason I am in awe of her. She was not ready to outlive her sons, but she didn't stop living because of their deaths. She taught so many people about how to take a tragedy and continue living, and we are all better for having known her and having learned from her. As so many people looked around at her funeral and saw the grief and despair of her survivors, I firmly believe they also saw a small piece of how to move on because they saw the way Debbie moved on in her own life.

Debbie was amazing. She still is amazing, and I think she always will be. I don't understand how she died, what happened to her heart, or whether or not this was part of His plan. I don't know where He was in her final moments, but I know she is with Him now, and I know He is with us. I think these are all the answers I can hope for today,