Death
Last Wishes of a Funeral Director’s Wife: Guest Post from Katy Prange
Several years ago, while Katy Prange was struggling to balance kids and a job with a husband who has no back seats in his vehicle 50% of the time, she discovered very few ways to connect with others who understand the unique life experiences of someone who shares Life With A Funeral Director.
As a result, she founded Life With A Funeral Director.com to create an online community and resource for others who share life with funeral industry professionals.
Katy has been married to a funeral director for almost 10 years and is mom to two little girls.
She is a Legislative Aide for her day job, writes a weekly blog at lifewithafuneraldirector.com and hosts a Life With A Funeral Director Facebook group. Katy’s vision is to offer others who share life with a funeral director some ideas, thoughts and resources to strengthen and maintain our relationships under extremely unique and challenging circumstances.
She is seeking to find a way to connect with future-spouses of funeral directors to help them think through some of the “stuff” that challenges us on a daily basis, before they have to react to it. By offering a little humor and perspective, Katy hopes to create a sanctuary for others who seek understanding, even if it’s after the third night that the pager has gone off at 3 a.m. In addition, Katy hates lilies.
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I attended a funeral this week that touched me unlike any other.
For anyone who knows me, you know that we’ve attended a record number in the past year, so I have some relatively recent experience to draw upon.
This funeral was for my sister-in-laws father, whom I knew, but not well. But I always enjoyed his company. I felt really lucky to have been able to spend Christmas Eve with her family at our church’s kid-service. Little did I know it would be the last time I would see his smile.
The funeral was very touching because it was a sincere celebration of a life that many people would probably call unremarkable. There weren’t lists of awards or accollades. There weren’t trophies and “things” that commemorated his life. His obituary didn’t look like a re-tooled resume.
But the room was full and the tears were plenty as a life of true love and an unwavering dedication to family was recalled through laughter and sadness. There was not a single mention of regret. It didn’t exist. But the stories, the “dad always saids…”, the strength that he held throughout his final battle and the little things of his everyday life, filled the space with a celebration.
As we often do, I started to contemplate my own demise and realized that there are some little things I need to start doing in my life now – to have the kind of life I want to be remembered when it is my turn. While I will be looking on from above, I still want my life to be worth celebrating. I want my children to know me and know unconditional love from me. I want to build traditions for them that they can pass down and live with their own families and maybe remember me when I am not there anymore. I want my husband to know how much I love and cherish him. I want to be remembered for the woman I was – not what I did.
I also realized I want everyone to hear my favorite songs at my funeral. I’m going to make them all eat Thai food at the after meal and then I want everyone to meet around a campfire after the service to have a beer and toast marshmallows.
And because I share a life with a funeral director, I know that if I write it down and plan it, it can happen that way. In death – as in life – I can be the complete control freak that I am and have things my way one last time. And if I live my life the way I should, no one will mind.
I attended a funeral this week that touched me unlike any other.
For anyone who knows me, you know that we’ve attended a record number in the past year, so I have some relatively recent experience to draw upon.
This funeral was for my sister-in-laws father, whom I knew, but not well. But I always enjoyed his company. I felt really lucky to have been able to spend Christmas Eve with her family at our church’s kid-service. Little did I know it would be the last time I would see his smile.
The funeral was very touching because it was a sincere celebration of a life that many people would probably call unremarkable. There weren’t lists of awards or accollades. There weren’t trophies and “things” that commemorated his life. His obituary didn’t look like a re-tooled resume.
But the room was full and the tears were plenty as a life of true love and an unwavering dedication to family was recalled through laughter and sadness. There was not a single mention of regret. It didn’t exist. But the stories, the “dad always saids…”, the strength that he held throughout his final battle and the little things of his everyday life, filled the space with a celebration.
As we often do, I started to contemplate my own demise and realized that there are some little things I need to start doing in my life now – to have the kind of life I want to be remembered when it is my turn. While I will be looking on from above, I still want my life to be worth celebrating. I want my children to know me and know unconditional love from me. I want to build traditions for them that they can pass down and live with their own families and maybe remember me when I am not there anymore. I want my husband to know how much I love and cherish him. I want to be remembered for the woman I was – not what I did.
I also realized I want everyone to hear my favorite songs at my funeral. I’m going to make them all eat Thai food at the after meal and then I want everyone to meet around a campfire after the service to have a beer and toast marshmallows.
And because I share a life with a funeral director, I know that if I write it down and plan it, it can happen that way. In death – as in life – I can be the complete control freak that I am and have things my way one last time. And if I live my life the way I should, no one will mind.
Did Jesus Die of a Broken Heart?
Here’s some psychological, biblical and historical evidence to provide some support that Jesus died from the “broken heart syndrome” (technically a psychosomatic phenomena called “stress-induced cardiomyopathy“).
Psychological Studies
Older couples that have been married for many years suffer intense grief when their spouse suddenly dies. Some times the husband and wife are so close that when the one dies, the other will end up dying soon after because of pain of being separated from their loved one.
People have studied the psychosomatic effects of rejection and separation. Dr. James Lynch wrote a book called, The Broken Heart, in which he states:
“stress, pain, anxiety, fear and rage sometimes appear in indexes of textbooks on the heart but never love. In surprising number of cases of premature coronary heart disease and premature death, interpersonal unhappiness, the lack of love and human loneliness, seem to appear as root causes of the physical problems.
We have learned that human beings have varied and at times profound effects on the cardiac systems of other human beings. Loneliness and grief often overwhelm bereaved individuals and the toll taken on the heart can be clearly seen. As the mortality statistics indicate this is not myth or romantic fairy tale. All available evidence suggests that people do indeed die of broken hearts”
Dr. Arthur Brown has been acknowledged by over sixty medical journals and publications for his findings. His findings also suggest a major relationship between heart disease and emotional stress.
Dr. David Jenkins states in the New England Journal of Medicine, “that a broad array of recent studies point with ever increasing certainty to the position that certain psychological, social and behavioral conditions do put persons at a higher risk of clinically manifest coronary disease”.
Dr. George Ingle from Rochester University Medical School, did a careful study for six years that explored the backgrounds of 170 sudden heart attack deaths. His studies showed that a great majority of sudden death cases had a close personal lose precede their death.
Grief is proportional to intimacy.
The more you love somebody, the more you are hurt when that person dies or rejects you. Can you be so close to somebody that their rejection can literally break your heart?
The Biblical Evidence
Jesus had a great amount of rejection and grief. Let’s look first at what the Bible says about Jesus’ rejection.
“He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hid their face, he was despised, and we did not esteem Him” Isaiah 53:3.
“Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone (the stone refers to Jesus) which the builders (teachers of Israel) rejected, this became the chief corner stone;” Matthew 21:42.
“But when the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and seize his inheritance.’ And they took him, and threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him” Matthew 22:38-39.
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling” Matthew 23:37.
“But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation” Luke 17:25.
“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and world did not know Him. He came to His own and those who were his own did not receive Him” John 1:10-11.
“And you are unwilling to come to me that you might have life” John 5:40.
“’They hated Me without cause’” John 15:25b.
These are a few passages that talk about Jesus’ rejection. There are others that state or imply His rejection by the world that He “so loved.” Several of the parables are about how the multitudes rejected Jesus. The parable of the landowner (Matt. 21:33-42), and the parable of the wedding feast (Matt.22:2-10) both depict the rejection of Jesus.
The scripture makes it clear that our Lord and Savior was rejected by the majority of those He loved.
Since love suffers when it cannot give
and intimacy is proportional to grief
we would assume that Jesus must have had an overwhelming grief.
The Bible states clearly that Jesus did indeed have great amounts of grief.
In Matthew chapter 26 verses 37 through 38, Matthew writes,
“And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, ‘My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death (italics added); remain here and keep watch with Me.’”
The entire chapter of Isaiah 53 describes Jesus’ grief. Here are the excerpts: “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”; “surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows he carried”; “But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief”; and “As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied”.
Sweating Blood:
The gospel of Luke (22:44) states, “And being in agony he was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.”
C. Truman Davis, M.D. writes in his book, The Crucifixion of Jesus,
“Though very rare, the phenomenon of Hematidrosis, or bloody sweat, is well documented. Under great emotional stress, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can break, thus mixing blood with sweat”.
Jesus bloody sweat is evidence of great grief.
Historical Evidence
The crucifixion was a horrible means of putting somebody to death. The criminal was nailed onto the cross in such a way that his legs would be bent at the knees. The bend in the knees placed all the criminals weight on his arms. This, of course, hurt the hands, but it did more than hurt the hands. The position that the cross placed the criminal in would cause muscle cramps throughout his body.
C. Truman Davis states (speaking of Jesus), “Hanging by His arms, the pectoral muscles are unable to act. Air can be drawn into the lungs, but cannot be exhaled” This disabled the criminal to let out his breath. In order to prevent suffocation, the criminal would have to push up with his legs to change position. After spasmodically pushing up with his legs, the criminal would take a quick breath of air before letting himself back down again.
The criminal would eventually die of asphyxiation, or suffocation. It was said that a strong man could hang on the cross, some say, up to ten days before their bodies were so tired that they could not continue the process to get breath. Jesus, who was most likely a healthy man (he was a carpenter) was on the cross for only six hours before He died (Mark 15:25, 33). Pilate, himself was astonished that Jesus died so quickly (Mark 15: 42-44).
The Roman soldiers were surprised Jesus died so quickly. The Jews did not want the bodies of the criminals to remain on the cross over the Sabbath, so they
“asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. The soldiers therefore came, and broke the legs of the first man, and of the other man who was crucified with Him; (breaking the legs disabled the criminals to push up so that they could exhale the carbon dioxide; thus, the criminal would suffocate to death) but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs” John 19:31-33.
Jesus was in his early to middle thirties and was most likely a strong man since He was a carpenter and walked most everywhere He went. If Jesus did die the normal crucifixion death, why did He die so quickly? Couldn’t he have lived longer on the cross?
We read in John’s gospel (John 19:34) that “one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water.” C. Truman Davis writes concerning the medical significance of the blood and water, “We, therefore, have rather conclusive post-mortem evidence that Our Lord died, not the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure…” (8). Heart failure that began to develop in the garden when Jesus was sweating blood, continued to build when he was rejected by many of his disciples and came to utter fruition when his people nailed him to a cross.
Let me suggest that Jesus died from stress-induced cardiomyopathy as a result of the rejection and grief he experienced as he walked the world.
Final thoughts from theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff:
God is love. That is why he suffers. To love our suffering, sinful world is to suffer. God so suffered for the world that he gave up his only Son to suffer. The one who does not see God’s suffering does not see his love. God is suffering love. Suffering is down at the center of things, deep down where the meaning is. Suffering is the meaning of our world. The tears of God are the meaning of history.
Holy Week Reflections on God’s Broken Heart
Floyd McClung had just finished teaching at a YWAM (Youth With A Mission) school, which involved speaking, personal ministry and personal counseling—18 hour days. Physically and spiritually exhausted, and simply “tired of people,” McClung boarded his plane back to his home in Amsterdam where he encounter the last thing he wanted—a needy, drunk man wanting his attention:
After a few minutes his head came around the corner. “Whatcha reading?” he asked as he peered over my shoulder. “My Bible,” I replied a bit impatiently. Couldn’t he see I wanted to be alone? I settled back in my seat, but a few minutes later the same pair of eyes were again looking over the top of my seat. “What kind of work do you do?” he asked.
Not wanting to get involved in a long conversation, I decided to make my answer brief. “A kind of social work,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t be interested. It bothered me a little that I was verging on not telling the truth, but I dared not tell him I was involved in helping needy people in the inner city of Amsterdam. That would be sure to provoke more questions.
“Mind if I sit by you?” he asked as he stepped over my crossed legs. He seemed to be oblivious to my efforts to avoid talking to him. He turned to face me and he reeked of alcohol. He spat as he spoke, sending a fine spray over my face.
I was deeply irritated by this man’s obnoxiousness. Couldn’t he see I wanted to be alone? All my plans for a quiet morning were destroyed by his insensitivity. “Oh God,” I groaned inwardly, “please help me.” The conversation moved slowly at first. I answered a few questions about our work in Amsterdam, and began to wonder why this man wanted so desperately to talk to someone. As the conversation unfolded it dawned on me that perhaps I was the one who was being insensitive.
“My wife was like you,” he said after a while. “She prayed with our children, sang to them and took them to church. In fact,” he said slowly, his eyes misting over, “she was the only real friend I ever had.”
“Had?” I asked. “Why are you referring to her in that way?”
“She’s gone.” By this time the tears were beginning to trickle down his cheeks. “She died three months ago giving birth to our fifth child. Why?” he gasped, “Why did your caring God take my wife away? She was so good. Why not me? Why her? And now the government says I’m not fit to care for my own children, and they’re gone too!”
I reached out and took his hand and we wept together. How selfish, how insensitive I had been. I had only been thinking of my need for a little rest when someone like this man desperately needed a friend. He filled in the rest of the story for me. After his wife died, a government appointed social worker recommended that the children be cared for by the state. He was so overwhelmed by grief that he couldn’t work, so he also lost his job. In just a few weeks he had lost everything, his wife, his children and his work. It was December so he had decided to leave; he couldn’t bear the thought of being at home alone for Christmas without his wife or children, and he was literally trying to drown his sorrows in alcohol.
He was almost too bitter to be comforted. He had grown up with four different step-fathers and he never knew his real dad. All of them were hard men. When I mentioned God he reacted bitterly. “God?” he said. “I think if there is a God he must be a cruel monster! Why did your loving God do this to me?
As I flew on the airplane with that wounded, hurt man, I was reminded again that many people in our world have no understanding of a loving God – a God who is a loving Father. To speak of a loving God, a God who is a Father, only evokes pain for them. And anger. To speak of the father heart of God to these people, without empathizing with their pain, verges on cruelty. The only way I could be a friend to that man, on the trip from Oslo to Amsterdam, was to be God’s love to him. I didn’t try to give pat answers. There were none. I just let him be angry and then poured some oil on his wounds. He wanted to believe in God, but deep inside his sense of justice had been violated. He needed someone to say that it was okay for him to be angry too. By the time I had listened and cared and wept with him, he was ready to hear me say that God was more hurt than he was by what had happened to his wife and family.
No one had ever told him that God has a broken heart. (8)
From “The Father Heart of God“
What does a broken hearted God imply?
It implies that God is not the victimizer… He’s not the master puppeteer behind this world of evil, but rather that HE HATES EVIL!
His grief reveals that God doesn’t have control over evil, for, if God controlled the evil, why would He grieve Himself?
God’s broken heart attests to his innocence, justice, hate of sin and effort to do everything in His power to stop sin. God is not the one inflicting suffering, He is the ultimate one who sufferers! Recognizing this alone has often staved my heart from losing faith in the goodness of God.
And maybe the cross is the pinnacle of that suffering. A suffering so intense that His body was unable to handle the grief and he died, not from the wounds of the body, but the wounds of the heart (more thoughts on this tomorrow).
“As If There Is No God”
On April 8th, 1966, TIME Magazine published one of the most controversial magazine covers ever. The TIME cover asked the question, “Is God Dead?”
In the article, TIME pinpointed Dr. William Hamilton as a co-leader in the Death of God Movement. You might think that Dr. Hamilton was an atheist, hell bent on undermining theism, but he was actually a tenured professor of church history at a seminary in New York. He was a regular church goer, self-avowed Christ follower and — once the article was released by TIME — found himself the subject of death threats, ostracism and at the center of much hate.
Dr. Hamilton died this past February 28, 2012 at the age of 87.
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While I can’t comment specifically on Dr. Hamilton’s version of the “Death of God”, I can comment on some other versions of the Death of God in Church History, specifically Bonhoeffer’s. And, I imagine, that Hamilton probably shared a similar sentiment with Bonhoeffer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the well-known Christian martyr of Nazi Germany during WWII. He’s also the beloved author of two widely praised books called, “The Cost of Discipleship” and “Life Together.” And yet he’s been heralded as an innovator of immanence, as developed in his other books, specifically his “Letters and Papers from Prison”.
Pastor Bonhoeffer writes “that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur (as if there is no God).
The “Death of God” for Bonhoeffer isn’t akin to atheism as one might immediately assume.
It’s a God immanent, not a god transcendent.
It’s a death to the god of the gaps.
It’s a death to the “opiate of the masses”.
It’s a death to the “deus ex machina“.
It’s the rejecting of the god above us who can miraculously solve all our fears by offering a hope of heaven.
Voltaire stated, “If God did not exist, we would have to invent him.” It’s the rejection of the god we invent as a crutch to take us out of this world of pain, sorrow and sin.
Bonhoeffer believed in God.
His was a God that is taking action through us, not one who is taking all our action and goodness out of this world.
It is the broken God of the cross imbued by the world’s sin, not the God of glory, imbued by power and holiness, riding in on a white horse for our rescue.
It’s a God who has been stripped of power, stripped of influence and subjected to the pains of the world.
The God who suffers with us.
The God who feels our pain.
It’s a rejection of a god of all certainty for the One who doubts … who pleads, “Why have you forsaken me?”.
It’s Jesus on the cross.
In forsaking the God above, we have the freedom to love below. Bonhoeffer’s idea was this: In killing our invented god, we become useful to the world.
It’s slippery, I know. But the idea is that our man made (often transcendent) god takes all of our love and good deeds out of this world. If we are to be any use in this world, that transcendent god must die, according to Bonhoeffer. And he must be replaced by Jesus … the dying God who so loved the world. When we realize the God is immanent in the world, we invest our lives in our neighbor and not necessarily in heaven. It’s that whole “in as much as you’ve done it to the least of these, you’ve done it to me” idea that’s harder to live out when we see heaven as a trump card for all our problems.
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What part of your god must die?
How to Move Beyond Grief and Why it’s NOT about Emotion
Today’s guest post is from Kristie West, a grief specialist who focuses on helping those who have lost parents. The advice Kristie gives in this post is helpful for anyone who is experiencing the bereavement of a loved one.
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How to move beyond grief when you’ve lost your mum or dad and why it’s NOT about emotion
Huh?!
I know what you’re thinking, “How on earth can you say that, Kristie?! Do you have any idea how I am feeling? It’s all about emotion!” Well if you’ve read me before you know I don’t throw out weird-sounding statements without explaining what I mean. So here goes…
I get asked all the time about where emotions fit into my work – am I encouraging them, suppressing them, ignoring them, allowing them to be released?
Every time I am asked this my brain blows a big raspberry at me, my mouth opens and out come some words that fit together, and the person I’ve been speaking to walks away thinking they know my position on emotions….even though they can’t possibly…..because even I am not sure what I said. And I am left feeling like a lemon.
But there is hope -I’ve finally figured out what the issue is. It’s because when I am asked about how emotions fit into my work my brain frowns and asks, in a confused way, “what does it have to do with emotion?”
So…where does emotion fit in then?
It isn’t about expressing or suppressing your emotion. You do need to let it out – yes. Cry, scream, write, move your body, have massages, whatever works for you – all that emotion gets stored and your body doesn’t want to hold it. So expressing your emotion is great, don’t hold it in, but simply expressing your emotion is not how you heal completely.
We’ve all spent plenty of time expressing a great deal of emotion over a great many things…enough to know that, while useful, it doesn’t take the problem away. The emotion is not the problem. The emotion is just a symptom.
Hold up a second….
Now let’s just stop for a second. Grief and all the emotions involved can seem beyond comprehension or rationalisation when you are in that space and it can be very tough to be objective about something so big and overwhelming, so to make sense of this let’s step away from grief for a second and use an easier example.
We often berate modern medicine for treating the symptom instead of the problem. Your doctor might give you paracetamol for headaches without trying to find out why you are getting them, or they might throw anti-depressants at you without once asking you to examine what thoughts you are thinking when you are depressed and do something about those. Treating the symptom helps alleviate your symptom. But the real source of your pain hasn’t been touched so the symptoms will keep coming in some way or will come back.
This morning I went to my chiropractor as my neck is hurting me. The pain isn’t the actual problem (though yes, it is what I am immediately experiencing as difficult and what is alerting me to a problem). The real problem is the source of the pain and that is why I go to my chiropractor. I don’t just start bunging on arnica cream hoping that will fix the problem for good. I do use the arnica (because having a sore neck feels horrid) but I know there is something causing this pain…and that is the thing that I need to work out.
How does this apply to grief?
Your grief is the same. Expressing your emotion is wise….but it won’t totally heal you. Because the source of your pain (and the source of your emotion) is your experience and understanding of the loss of your mum or dad. And that is what you have to change to move beyond your grief. Because you can let out all the emotion you like, scream it out, exercise it out, write it out, tap it out….but doing this won’t change yourexperience or perception of your loss. And as long as the source isn’t touched you could potentially be dealing with a bottomless cup of emotion. Yes it feels better to get your emotion out today. But what happens tomorrow? Or next week? Or in 10 years time when you talk about the loss? More emotion. More ‘symptoms’…….because the source, the root, the cause of your pain, is still exactly where you left it.
A new way of thinking
I know this is totally different to probably everything you’ve heard or read. If it’s healing you want, then just working with your emotions – no matter what you do to them – won’t provide that. You need to go much deeper. Because here is the thing with your emotions: when you go deeper than them, when you get underneath them, and change your experience and understanding of what has happened in your life….then the emotions change. And this is where true healing happens.
Are you ready for a new way of thinking?
It can seem an impossible journey to reach a different understanding and perspective of your loss. But it starts with the first step…and though deceptively simple, that step is profound and powerful.
The first step is to ask yourself whether you are prepared to try a different way of looking at your loss. And to be able to answer ‘yes’.
If a new perspective is possible….are you willing to look?
If a new perspective can move you beyond your pain….are you willing to look?
If a new perspective can allow you to talk about, remember, and love your mum or dad without it hurting you….are you willing to look?
If a new perspective allows you to feel closer to them than you imagined was possible… are you willing to look?
And don’t stop asking until your answer is yes. Because that is the first step in an incredible journey….and your journey cannot start until you take that first step. And this journey will change your experience, your life and your connection to your mum or dad for good.
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Kristie West is a grief specialist. Her experience with the death of six family members (including her father) in a four month time span and her personal journey through those devastating months provide her with a unique position to speak about this tender subject with objectivity and sensitivity.
Head on over to her website and sign up to receive her free e-book, “The Seven Biggest Myths about Grief”.
You can also stalk her on twitter and like her on facebook.
