Have You Ever Seen Anybody Die?

Last Sunday, at 11:45 a.m., I watched my close friend and landlord draw his last breath. I had never seen anyone die before, and I would never have said before having the experience that this was something I would have liked or have wanted to do. No, sir.

I was rushing to go out and meet someone when the phone rang. It was my next-door neighbor, an elderly woman who was expressing concern that she has just heard from my landlady and couldn’t make out what she was saying. She was very worried. I had planned to look in on Bob and his wife before I left for the day, but I said I would go downstairs right away.

Without a second thought, I went down and knocked on their door. Bob’s wife let me in and said there was no emergency, that the next-door neighbor was hard of hearing and that “everything is okay.” Of course, everything was not okay. We all knew that Bob was near death. He had been suffering from bladder cancer for over four years. He had been in remission after surgery and had gone on several wonderful cruises. But the cancer had recurred a year or so ago, and after numerous radiation and chemo treatments, he was now in hospice. I found Bob in a deep coma, or sleeping from the huge amounts of morphine and oxycoton that kept him heavily sedated. He was breathing heavily as if struggling to catch his breath. It was a sad and alarming sight.

His wife said, “If you’re in church, please say a prayer for Bob.” I replied, “Let’s just say a prayer now!” I asked God to visit, comfort, and relieve him, to receive Bob into His everlasting arms. The minute I said amen, Bob stopped breathing. His eyes opened and rolled back, and after about a minute, he exhaled one long, final breath. The hospice nurse, who just happened to be there at the same time, said that he had passed.

Bob’s wife said, “Go, Bob; go, honey! Go to God! You’re free! We love you. It’s okay. You can go now!” She went round to the other side of the bed, closed his eyes, pulled the sheet neatly up under his chin, and kissed him on the cheek.

Was the phone call from the neighbor a phone call from God? Was God saying, “Get down there, because you have some work to do!” Or was Bob perhaps waiting for a final rite of passage so that he could leave his body in peace? Who knows. I was telling the neighbor at the funeral that she was an angel, that I would not have gone down as early as I did had she not called. She replied, “Who knows? But it’s nice to believe that it was as you suggest.”

Strange. It was as if everything unfolded exactly as it was supposed to. The phone call, the decision to go downstairs (which was not really a decision: I just went), the prayer, the dying, the beautiful love expressed in the room. Even the hospice nurse, a lovely, caring woman, said she was very moved by the event. It was a good death.

I feel very privileged to have witnessed this dying. The dying teach us. First, I was impressed with how natural dying is. Not pleasant, at least for the surviving—sad more adequately describes it. But it is not terrifying, awful, bad, unpleasant even. Of course, I’m not talking about violent or premature death. Those add different elements. But natural: we are born, we teethe, we burp, we cry, we laugh, we sigh, we eat, we make love, we lose our hair, we get fat, we lose weight, we get sick and we die. Like that. Another thing I learned is how quickly the body begins to recede back into the earth from which it came. It is no longer of use. Get rid of it. Of course, it is treated with respect. But it an empty shell; it is nothing but remains. Nature has no more use for it in that form. Bob’s wife left him in bed until the children and grandchildren and other family members could come and say goodbye. When the coroner came to remove the body, it looked like just a small lump inside the body bag as it was wheeled out of the house on the gurney. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes. Just like that.

There was something very holy about this experience. Dying is a sacred moment. It’s no wonder that it is surrounded with rituals, superstition, and myths. For we only die once. And witnessing a death first-hand certainly convinces me (not intellectually convinces me, because at bottom it’s a big fat mystery) that this life is not all there is. Our life is, I believe, contained inside a larger life.

I don’t like the term afterlife. “After” implies time. And time is known only on this plane. Perhaps our life is more like a smaller basket inside a larger basket. The smaller will deteriorate, break apart…and be absorbed into the larger basket.

And the good news in this analogy is that we are already in the larger basket.