It seems like it was only yesterday, yet I know it was much further back in time. I was but a child then and only about four or five. My mom was taking my sister and me to the hospital to see our grandmother. A hospital seemed rather boring to a child, all white and smelly and no toys to play with to pass the time, but we enjoyed our grandmother and we wanted to say hello and perhaps get some of those great grandma hugs. We went into the room and grandma was on the bed. There were tubes running in and out of her and she looked a little different then we were used to, but she lit up with the smile we knew so well and gave us both a hug that seemed a little weaker then we were accustomed to.
We set down and watched her lying there, speaking to our mom. She reached over to my sister and me and took our hands. She started telling us stories about what she was like when she was our age. Although we could not imagine her young, since she was always our grandmother and never anything younger. She told us about how she would play in the yard and how her father would rake up all the leaves into a pile and she would jump into them and make him really mad. She mentioned how she always made home made cakes with her mom and how she loved to lick the icing bowl like she had seen us do before. She then mentioned how she missed my grandfather, who we had never met because mom said he went to sleep years before we were born. She mentioned their wedding and how simple it was and how her mother really thought grandpa was a bum and he turned out to do all right in life. Then she mentioned how she went to an assembly in California when she was in her 20's and heard Judge Rutherford speak for the first time, and how he got her so excited about Jehovah and the Bible that she was young again in her life. We heard tales of how they used to do field service with these record machines that played sermons if people took the time to listen to them. We heard account after account of the time she spent in the field service and how important Jehovah was to her life. This pale older woman spoke these accounts as she lied there on the bed before us, those many years ago in my life.
The day was getting long and we had spent a great part of the time sitting in this boring hospital, when it seemed like the real fun was happening outside. My mom seemed so sad at seeing her mother and we wondered why she would be that way, when normally she was happy all the time when grandma was around. So it was time to go and grandma had us come to her and give her a big hug and then told us to be good and then the words we heard often, "good-bye, I love you two very much." We headed out of the room all excited that it was time to go, and before we left out the door, we looked at our grandma lying on the bed and said our final "good-bye." Had I known then what I know now, I would have said something more. For that was not the "good-bye until I see you again, " but rather "good-bye from this life." For grandma died only a day later and nothing more could be said to the older woman that we last seen lying on that bed.
Yet when I ponder over a moment like this and think about this woman who lived and spread her life into this world so that I to breathe today. I cannot help but think about what that last conversation we had dealt with. It was about the joys of youth, the highlights of a good marriage and the wasted hopes of a religion that promised her no death and yet that death came only a short time after our last encounter. It does not make me feel sad for my grandmother, although I wished she could have been in my life longer then the four or five years I got to share with her. No, instead it teaches me a lesson of wasted time with the time we are given. We can make our life about memories of youth, marriage and several other moments of joy to come or we can make our life about spending years after years preaching of a time that will not come. Yes, some might say that my grandmother "fought the fine fight" and did something that will get her resurrected in a new system of things to come. At the same time, it is a gamble that she will never really know she lost. What gamble?
The gamble that this life and what we do with it, might be all we have. Maybe this whole adventure from birth to death is not about what will happen after this life, but rather what happens in this life. Wouldn't it be a waste to learn at death that you wasted the single best gift this universe could ever offer you, in thinking that you had everything figured out and would gamble on the fact that the next life would make up for all the dreams you gave up in the one life you were living? Well I am not one to gamble on a bet that has been lost by millions of strangers before me and in the presence of my own life, with relatives who spent many years on this planet preaching the end would come. Only to have their final moments highlighted with a spot of joy from youth, and a lifetime of wasted preaching work. Thus I must accept that the end will come for me and for all in this world, with the one thing we cannot escape, death. In my personal end, when I look back over my days from birth until that moment, I will find my life's path so full that the final moment of my life flashing before my eyes will not take mere seconds, but maybe several hours or days.
Grandma is one who is missed and one who is no longer in this world physically with me, but her lesson of her last visit speaks to me from beyond whatever grave your life has told you the dead reside in. For that I am allowed the joy of one final hug, one final word of wisdom, from a time many years ago. A time much further back then I care to think of. In the words of Paul McCartney, "you say Good-bye, I say Hello," in that the death of those I love and loved is not about saying "Good-bye" to them and whatever their life made them. Rather is remembering to say "Hello" to all my own tomorrows and remembering to find as many leaf piles as possible to jump into and licking all those icing bowls. Above all things, I will not sit on my death bed and look down to my children and grandchildren and say, "life was all about preaching about Jehovah." No I will look down to those children, many years from now and say, "live it well, live it well. I know I did"
Edited by - whyhideit on 7 January 2003 23:10:3