For This We Long…

My grandfather passed away yesterday. He had Parkinson’s and I knew when he slipped into a coma that the call would come at any moment. I did not think on it too deeply, and when I received the news, I did not stop the tears. This is the first death I have experienced in which the person taken is someone dear to me, and yet I am struck by how my heart feels it the way it felt the loss of friends as I grew up, as I moved away, time and time again. Perhaps I am not such a stranger to death as I thought I was.

He was a smart man with passion, and in his healthier days we would go round and round in heated debates about the world and life. We were raucous and loud, and if there is any question as to where my stubborn streak was born, one only had to look at this man. He loved Jesus, and he loved his family, and while his faith was more in the vein of the ‘40s and ‘50s, it translated down to my mother, and then to me, once again proving that God is made strong in our weaknesses.

I was blessed in these last few years to see him. We still debated, but I had to demonstrate patience. His mind was sharp, but his body moved slowly. Our debates were quieter, but we remained equally stubborn. We shared ice cream in the evenings, as we had when I was a young girl, and I even had the chance to include my son in such a tradition. Three generations around a table that looked more at home in the ‘70s than in our sleek and minimalist 21st century. When I left him last, I knew I would not see him again on this earth. I part of me began to mourn then.

He was a true Christian and in his last months, that faith which had rippled out from him, poured back over him as it hit the edges of his legacy, and Christ granted him peace and assurance in a fulfilled Law and a perfect Savior. Even so, while I find great comfort that he closed his eyes on earth and opened them again to see the glory that is Christ, I weep for those of us here, that remain in a world that is often so dark.

Death is not natural. Oh, it is natural in the sense that it is common, and that it is sure to happen, but it’s not how it was supposed to be. We were not meant to die. I find that as the tears come, I feel as though I am weeping the same tears Adam and Eve must have wept when they were banished from the Garden, and when she first tasted the loss of life in her son Abel. Just as sin has been passed from generation to generation, so too this grief, a remembered grief. I cry because things are not yet as they should be. I mourn because the waiting is not yet over.

My grandfather is not dead, but he is where I cannot go. I am glad that he has been able to cast off from himself the body that failed him, and that he had worn that body out so that it was worth discarding. Today he sees the treasure I long for, he sees our Creator and is known as he was always meant to be known. For that, I have joy and peace.

Even so, I miss him.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down for these words are trustworthy and true.” -Revelation 21:3-5