TEN YEARS AFTER

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” (I Corinthians 15:58)

This morning for my devotional reading, I read I Corinthians 15. It’s one of the great Resurrection chapters of the Bible, along with the Easter passages from the four gospels. I’ve preached from I Corinthians 15 on several Easter Sundays, and I’ve read the last part of the chapter at a number of graveside committal services.
It’s interesting that I read I Corinthians 15 today, because today marks exactly ten years since the death of my father. Yes, I am a very “dates oriented” guy. I get that from my mother. She pretty much knew the significance of every day. A devout Catholic, it was not unusual for her to begin the day announcing something like, “Oh, today is the feast of saint ...so-in-so...” or “Today is December the 7th- the day they bombed Pearl Harbor” - that sort of thing. I’m the same way. At the answering service where I work, we all notice that when a call comes in for a pediatric practice, the moms always know the kids’ birthdays. When you ask a father for the child’s date of birth, you get, “Oh..uh... well this is embarrassing...I think it’s June...”. Well, I was never that kind of father. And, I will always remember that June 9, 2000 is the day my father “slipped away,” to borrow the title of Avril Lavigne’s song about her grandfather’s death.

Dad was in a nursing home on an Alzheimer’s Unit for the final nine months of his life. He died on a Friday. I remember that on the previous Sunday, we had visited with him. We’d wheeled him outdoors because it was a nice day. His friend Tony brought him a shake (well, in Boston, we call milk shakes “frappes”, so it really was a “frappe”!). Dad loved frappes...even as he deteriorated, he loved frappes, but on that Sunday he hardly drank any of it, and even for an Alzheimer’s patient he was PARTICULARLY “out of it”. Yes, the end was coming near. On Thursday morning, June 8, my mother called me and said the nursing home had said Dad was near death. I had to do some fancy rearranging of my schedule, but I went and spent the day at the nursing home. Dad had survived SO much- bleeding ulcers, massive nosebleeds, a massive stroke, some mini strokes, and various heart problems including open heart surgery. Many people think he died of Alzheimer’s Disease, but he actually died of gall bladder cancer which is VERY rare. He died very peacefully. He had been at my maternal grandmother’s bedside in 1977 when she died and described the experience as “like a candle going out”. Well, on Friday, June 9, 2000 at 3:35 p.m. the candle went out. It was hard to believe this guy who’d had such a DOMINANT and authoritarian personality had been reduced to being on the level of a very small child in a nursing home requiring 24 hour care. The Sunday afternoon in November of 1999 that he received Jesus Christ as His Personal Lord and Savior with me was on the level of a very little kid in a preschool Sunday School class asking Jesus into his heart. And, eight months later, when the time came, he was ready to go.

As many of you know, 2010 for me has been quite a year of personal upheavals and a lot of taking of personal inventory. It’s not been easy or fun. But on this day, I pause and I remember; I remember that there’s a heaven to gain and a hell to shun. I remember what’s REALLY important. I remember that even if I’m in the lowliest of states when the time comes that I pass away, I will go to “dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (see Psalm 23).