THE ROCK

This week, on the eighth anniversary of my father's death, I was doubly reminded of the fragility of life by a friend who is currently despairing over her mother's death. Last spring, my friend returned to the mid-west to build a home for her mother. In August, five days after moving her into the home, her mother was tragically stuck by a mail delivery truck and killed. Violently. Bloody. Devastating. Pinned in the wreckage. A nightmare loss.

Who can understand such a senseless tragedy?

This afternoon, while texting with my friend, I fell back into old habits. I wanted to fix her pain. Give her advice. Overwhelm her with encouragement. But that's not what she needed. She needed the one thing I learned most of all when I went through personal crisis in 2008 and the death of my father in 2012: someone to simply weep with her.

My family and I continue, even to this day, to work through the grieving process of losing my father. It's surprising how long it takes to overcome grief and loss.

I was the one who found my father's lifeless body --

half-cold in the brisk winter air, in the woods, at 7:11 p.m., an hour after sunset. I was the only member of my family who experienced being alone with my father's dead body in the chill of the darkness. Several others could have found him, but they didn't. My mother had gotten stuck in the mud with her truck at the bottom of the hill where my father's body laid. She was frantically searching for him with a flashlight after he hadn't returned from the woods after dark. But she couldn't see him because of trees on a ridge that blocked her sight. After my brother arrived with a search party, he ran just 50 feet from my father's body, but didn't see him. But I saw him. I was led to his body. And finding him, I reacted like a wounded animal in a deathtrap.

I believe I was meant to find his body. 

Throughout the 23 years of my father's previous illnesses, I don't remember being present when he was in the hospital for checkups or surgery. In fact, when my grandparents were sick, I don't remember flocking to visit them, either. Yes, I did so. I visited and spent time with all of them. And to be fair, many times I was living elsewhere or away on missions and volunteer service trips. But there has always been something in me that has avoided the sick, the dead, and the dying. 

Even as a boy, I deeply grieved the death of animals as if I could feel the life draining from their bodies. This is related to how God has made me, personally: a spiritually sensitive man. Which is a gift to be navigated wisely. But being the first to find my father's body in the blackness of night, his face ghastly lit by the feeble, jaundiced light of my flashlight --

I came face-to-face with my greatest fear: Death. 

Seeing the body of a loved one in a sterile casket in a funeral home is very different from finding their stiffened body in our everyday world. It is the most helpless of feelings, knowing a spirit has left their body and cannot seen or rescued. I've read about tribes in South America where the Shamans actually see the spirits leaving the bodies of the dead, causing the Shamans to attempt to "rescue" them before they are carried away by an eagle-like creature into a vortex in the clouds that appears to be looking up through the surface of water. They believe a Great Monster lives above the water, above the clouds, who eats the spirits of the dead. But this naive understanding gives hope to those of us who know the Great Spirit who lives above the clouds and sends His angels to carry away our loved ones into His presence.

The memory of finding my father in the woods haunted me for years. My sister, Jana, and I experienced PTSD due to attempting to revive him with chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitations -- longer that most people there had ever witnessed. We wouldn't give up. I had been attempting to revive him long before my sister arrived. I say "long before," which in the midst of trauma could have been five minutes or 20. The experience seared into our psyches and wouldn't heal. We kept reliving the visceral flashbacks of attempting to resuscitate our father's dead body, causing us to randomly burst into tears in private or public spaces. At any time of the day. At any place.

Yet, though it was one of the most horrific moments of my life, it was also somehow sacred.

My father's grave is of no importance to me. His doorway to heaven is at the very spot where he died. In the woods. Where I contended for his spirit to be reunited with his body. I now know why mourners place flowers along the highway where loved ones are killed; why most cultures revere battle grounds and the scenes of death, slaughter, victory and loss. Where the blood soaks into the ground, that is the sacred place. And in the case of a tragedy:

It's where the blood cries out to God for justice.

Like the blood of Abel. And even the Blood of Christ.

"I now know why mourners place flowers along the highway where loved ones are killed; why most cultures revere battle grounds and the scenes of death, slaughter, victory and loss. Where the blood soaks into the ground, that is the sacred place. And in the case of a tragedy: It's where the blood cries out to God for justice."

Kneeling by my father's body, I sobbed and wept not because I had no hope. On the contrary. I was keenly aware that he was somehow watching me, only now with new understanding of life beyond all the painful twists and turns and losses. My weeping was for me and my family. For the loss of his presence. And for what my father had told me many years ago that he had heard from the Holy Spirit: "Your latter days will be greater than your former." What a beautiful promise. But I didn't see it come to pass. At least not in any way I had expected. And I cried out to my father's spirit to come back into his body -- to fulfill his "latter days" promise. But he didn't. I wept as I pumped his chest with my bare hands, trying desperately to force his life back into his soul. But to no avail. It was as useless as pumping air into an empty sack or trying to ignite fire in a wet nugget of coal. 

When I finally stopped pumping my father's chest, I became aware of my surroundings: there were firetrucks and an ambulance parked in the nearby neighborhood beyond the woods. And there were at least 20 paramedics and neighbors standing nearby, silently watching in sorrow. In pity. They knew there was no hope in reviving my father.

I chose to disregard the coroner's urgings to immediately transport my father's body to a funeral parlour. Instead, I instructed the paramedics to transport his body to my parents's home, on the other side of their fifteen acre woods. They were shocked, but followed my order. There, we laid my father on a table in the sitting room where our family, neighbors, and friends visited to mourn and grieve in what used to be called a wake: a one-to-three day period of time dedicated to the washing, cleaning, and grieving over the body of the deceased. It was a time to sit in silence. To groan. To tell stories. To laugh. To weep. To let go.

"We laid my father on a table in the sitting room where our family, neighbors, and friends visited to mourn and grieve. It was a powerful experience. One I wouldn't trade for anything."

In the end, my resolve to hold a wake for my father only lasted six hours before we acquiesced to the pressure to transport my his body to the funeral home. It was a life-changing, impactful six hours of loved ones entering our home to say good-bye to my father. It was a powerful experience. One I wouldn't trade for anything.

One of the hardest things to endure concerning his death was that he died alone in the woods at night, cutting firewood. Alone. Before God. He appeared dishonored to me. Lying there. A pained expression on his face. Laid out on the ground beside his chainsaw, ax, and mower, just as his father had died, beside his mower on the lawn of his country church. Both my father and grandfather died by their lawn mowers while working amidst their sanctuaries: one with a little white church steeple; the other with pillars of trees holding up a canopy of stars.

"Both my father and grandfather died by their lawn mowers while working amidst their sanctuaries: one with a little white church steeple; the other with pillars of trees holding up a canopy of stars."

But even still, I carried anger towards my father for leaving me without a notice or letters of explanation. We discovered later that he told the doctor just a week-and-a-half earlier that he was done taking his medicines. The doctor warned him that he may not survive such a choice. We also learned that my father told a relative just a month or two earlier that he was finished on this earth. That he had "taught his children everything he was here to teach them." My father appeared to have given up, to have gone into the woods to die.

And I was angry at God for not answering my prayer to allow me to be my father's side when he died. To be able to say good-bye. To weep with him. To thank him for his life one last time. To receive his blessing.

And that's what came back to me today as I texted with my friend who lost her mother. She is burdened with severe trauma of ghastly images of her mother's body in a severe traffic accident. PTSD is very real. It can last for years. And a lifetime. How can a God of love allow such tragedy to slash into so many lives on a daily basis? How are we to respond? How can we keep faith without turning to despair or apostasy?

I lost almost everything in life due to my unhealthy reaction to such questions, expectations, tragedy, and loss. But I am still alive. For that I am grateful. And I believe God can restore my life, and the lives of others, in an instant. Or over a lifetime. Or in heaven. He can revive a broken spirit. Mine. And my friend's, who is paralyzed by grief from the tragic loss of her mother.

And yours.

Who can say whether or not God's promise to my father will not live out its blessing in my life, and in the lives of all his sons and daughters, grandchildren, and great grand children. Maybe God was sending us a message concerning his promise in a unique package.

THE ROCK

At my father's memorial service we were asked by the grave diggers if we wanted a boulder that they had cut out of my father's gravesite. When I heard this, I was ecstatic. It was so strange, it felt like a spiritual setup. We all had to say yes.

Hours later, I got a chance to see the rock. And then as we were standing by my father's gravesite for the burial, I felt compelled to say this: "I believe God is giving us this rock as a symbol: for a rock was cut out of the earth in order to place a rock of a man into the earth." That made some people uncomfortable. But I felt strongly it was a sign and gift from the Holy Spirit. Sure enough, when the delivery truck brought the rock to my mother's house, just as the driver was about the leave, he asked, "Do you want to know how much the rock weighs?" He had no idea I had been wondering about that vert question for two weeks. "7600 pounds," he said. And I almost jumped for joy. Because my father died at 76 years old. That's a hundred pounds of rock for every year of his life.

I knew this was God's quiet, yet exacting consolation in our time of distress.

Rock cannot he burned like straw and stubble. Apparently, my father had stored up riches in heaven that will not be burned away. And this 7600 pound rock was a symbol of his character. An eternal prize.

We can choose to be a rock.

More than ever, I believe faith builds a highway to our future, good or bad. If we believe a lie, our future is stolen. If we believe the truth -- and hold firm -- God promises to fulfill His purpose and plan for us.

Our character is forged --

As we choose faith in the midst of adversity.

I'll end with these words that I wrote two days after my father's death, on March 5, 2012:

"I faced my greatest fear when I found the lifeless body of my father lying helplessly in a cold, dark woods. And the haunting reality that I could do nothing to revive him in this realm. Who can ever prepare for such things? Yet countless numbers have experienced this, and worse, throughout human history. It is the paradox and inexplicable nature of mankind to feel deep sorrow in losing those we love, while simultaneously feeling twinges of relief when our loved ones are freed from the suffering of this realm."

"Only God understands why He has woven this dramatic and painful through-line into the narrative of every human life. It is not an experience for the faint of heart. Nor for the selfish heart. Yet for the heart that welcomes the deep embrace of love, it cannot avoid the severe pangs that will one day accompany such love."

"Maybe we are never meant to understand these mysteries until we ourselves are found lifeless by yet another living soul weeping over us, over their loss, as we, ourselves, travel to the next world that awaits us. Only those who close the door on this realm can know what truly awaits us in the next."

"Until then, we see only through a mist, trusting in the goodness of the One we believe is Love."

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FOR COMMENTS: Please scroll down to the lower comment box. I would love to hear your thoughts.

NOTE: Based on a journal excerpt posted by Kevyn Bashore on October 12, 2012.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kevyn Bashore

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