I planned to use this week’s Paulywogs column to write about my voting day experience as a poll worker, but something more important arose.
When I was younger, I was interested in different ways that people met their end. Here are three of them. These all come from the late 1970s.
In Italy, two motorists were driving towards each other in a fog so dense that they couldn’t see the front of their cars. To get even a sense of where the road was, they both had rolled their windows down to look out. As it happens, they were too close together, they banged heads and both entered eternity.
In another incident, in New York, a cat was perched on a small ledge several stories above the ground. One person noticed it and that drew the attention of many others. As people watched, some backed onto the street and were hit by drivers and killed. Another found the excitement too much and had a heart attack and perished. When all was said and done, the cat was rescued but seven people on the ground died.
One more. This one wasn’t as bizarre as the first two, but a comment from a neighbour was. In Chicago, a man shot his whole family; if memory serves me correctly, he shot his wife and four children before turning the gun on himself. Newspaper reporters were on the scene, trying to get a glimpse into the life of the man who held the gun. One neighbour astutely observed something like this: “The family fought a lot, but nothing like this before.”
We read stories like this and perhaps see a bit of humour in the midst of tragedy.
But really, there’s nothing funny about death.
The harshness of death has hit me hard again over the past several months. It began with the passing of my brother-in-law, who died unexpectedly at the age of 60. I recently attended a funeral of a person who died tragically at the age of 20. Far, far, far too young. And then, even more recently, I heard the news of a man whom I had talked to on voting day who was killed in a car accident. He was 57.
Death is tragic and death is a certainty for all of us. Sometimes we are fortunate to have some warning, as a dear friend of mine did almost two years ago. He had cancer and the doctors told the family that he had no more than a few months to live. He ended up having several months beyond that, and it gave him and his family time to help prepare him for death and to make sure that everything was in order.
But for those who die accidentally or prematurely, often there is no time to prepare or get everything in order. So many people pass from this life not realizing when they get up that morning, it will be for the last time.
My ‘main job’ is pastoring. I have tried to make a point of not using this column to expound my religious beliefs, but with death coming so close to me lately, I can’t help it.
Perhaps life’s greatest tragedy is that none of us is immune from death. It might give us a warning that it’s coming, but for many, it’s a terrible surprise.
