Coffee, Cats, and Death

They are. Thanks for asking. Baby Kitty is in another room on another bed. That rascal. But Luvie and CC are on the bed with me as I peck at the keyboard and sip coffee that tastes like it costs lots of money. My wife is good like that.

Though the cats are OK, Momma, on the other hand, is not. I mentioned in the last post that she has gone downhill over the past few months. She has had severe health issues for more than half a decade now. Most likely she would not have survived 2012 if it had not been for my little sister, Carol, who has cared for Jo Hodge like a little baby and has tried everything and thought everything and done everything possible.

"That was our last Hail Mary," she told me yesterday, her eyes reddening as she spoke of a recent medical procedure Mom had. "It didn't work, and we are out of options."

I'll leave that conversation there; that one is private. But the larger conversation about death, the contemplation of it, the reality of it, is not.

We seem to have a genius for avoiding the subject. I use "we" with confidence because I cannot imagine any sane person disagreeing with me on this. Yet we can't drive a car very far in any direction without passing a cemetery. We can't even drive much around town without seeing road kill. TV programming gives us death by the bucket full, as does the nightly news, and even a cursory glance at a newspaper exposes us to obituaries. Despite all this, we rarely think about it, death, and almost never discuss it.

I guess we don't care to ponder our own mortality. Recently I attempted to talk to my wife about funeral arraignments. The mouth I married, the one that never stops, stopped. I see that conversation is never going to happen. We do have a plot and a tombstone, provided as a gift by her dad. Thank you, Ellis Roberts. It's a nice stone in a family cemetery where we laid Penny's mother to rest almost four years ago. She is on a little hilltop overlooking the house she and her husband built. We planted her there on a cold, rainy February day. I preached her funeral and wrote a tribute to her in this blog (RIP Louise Roberts-- 2/8/2014). That post remains my second most read post of all time with 914 views. 

Every time we go to Hillbilly Heaven, I take a stroll over the hilltop with the stones. I gaze at my name and birth date. One date is missing, to be supplied later. What will that date be? There is some discomfort in pondering that. There is some comfort, however, in knowing where your survivor's will bury you. At least a little. But I must admit, the first time I looked at that tombstone with my name on it was a bit strange, unsettling.

I wonder if animals have a sense of their own mortality. They do have fear of anything that will harm them and will fight valiantly and viciously to live. But do they think of it. Some would say animals don't think at all, and once I believed this. By now, however, I have spent far too much time with precious pets to be deceived in that manner any more.

The Bible speaks on death. A lot. It calls it our last enemy to be defeated:

• Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
• For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.
• The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. 

                                                                       (1 Corinthians 15: 24-26)

I suppose that helps explain things a bit. Death is an enemy, an intruder, not part of the original order. But it will be destroyed in due time.

Despite this and other great promises, none of us seems to embrace our own passing or the passing of a loved one be that loved one a family member, friend, or pet. On the part of the ones left, the loss, the separation, is troubling. On the part of the one passing, maybe it is the fear of the unknown. Whatever it is, maybe we should spend more time thinking about it. Death is part of the world we live in and we all have an appointment with it.