No matter how much faith you have, death is scary. Losing people is scary even if you are losing them to a better place. Death-- separation-- feels permanent. Resurrection and reunion seem such very far away concepts. If you love, you cannot meet death, not even indirectly or hypothetically, without pain.
First there was the terrible news of a family driving along and being hit, in the canyon a few weeks ago, with some members living and some dying, and with the other car's driver also dying. We see the little memorials on both sides of the road, with flowers and pinwheels and teddy bears, along the sides of the road, every time we drive up and down the canyon.
Then there was the terrible news of a teenage football player who drowned while swimming in the creek with friends, close by. Neighbors and friends of ours knew him well.
Then, a dear lady whom I used to visit-teach every month passed away after a nine year battle with breast and lung cancer. No chemo; just alternative medicines. I went to the funeral but couldn't handle going to the viewing.
The strange thing was that I thought of her many times about a week or two before I got the phone call that she'd died. I wish I'd listened to that still, small voice and called her, visited her, said goodbye.
So, this week, when it happened again (I kept thinking and thinking about my dear old mission president, Joseph Fielding McConkie, who has been battling lung cancer for a few years) I did not dismiss my thoughts. I found his phone number and called.
His dear wife answered. She told me his illness has been hard, and that he just got out of the hospital again and that she's just trying to keep him comfortable. His potassium was very low, probably because of the nasty chemo treatments. Yet, he went to the family reunion and went fishing with his kids, not because he actually had the strength but because he wanted to so badly. Dear Sister McConkie. She said she's had some days that are so hard, dealing with all the thoughts. But on one particularly hard day, Julie Beck called her, out of the blue. That was, she said, a tender mercy of the Lord.
She asked if I wanted to talk to President McConkie and I said thank you but that's okay; just give him a hug from me. I don't want to tire him.
But she handed him the phone anyway, and I was glad to hear his voice and I told him I'd been thinking about him. "You need to get your mind on a higher plane," he said. That's so like him. I told him the things I had in my heart, as if it were my last chance to give him the thank you that is emblazoned in my heart for all he has given me. Words are inadequate. But I did try to tell him how very much I appreciate all he did and what an influence he's had on my life and so many other people's lives. And I told him this, which I am sure he got: that when I read descriptions people gave of Joseph Smith, who knew him personally, those descriptions often remind me of President McConkie *.
I will write them:
- From Jonah R. Ball: The way he unfolds the scriptures is beyond calculation or controversy....He explained it as clear as the [noonday] sun."
- From Mercy Fielding Thompson: "To him all things seemed simple and easy to be understood, and thus he could make them plain to others as no other man could that I ever heard."
- From Mary Alice Cannon Lambert: "Saints and sinners alike felt and recognized a power and influence which he carried with him. It was impossible to meet him and not be impressed by the strength of his personality and influence."
- From William Clayton: "...whilst you listen to his conversation you receive intelligence which expands your mind and causes your heart to rejoice... He seems exceedingly well versed in the scriptures... such light and beauty is revealed as I never saw before. If I had come from England purposely to converse with him a few days I should have considered myself well paid for my trouble."
- From Brigham Young: "...he could reduce heavenly things to the understanding of the finite."
- From Howard Coray: "I have sat and listened to his preaching at the stand in Nauvoo a great many times when I have been completely carried away with his... power of expression --speaking as I have never heard any other man speak."
- From Joseph L. Robinson: "He truly had been educated in the things pertaining to the kingdom of God and was highly charged with the Holy Ghost, which was a constant companion."
- From Orson Spencer: "I have never known him to deny or depricate a single truth of the Old and New Testaments; but I have always known him to explain and defend them in a masterly manner...at his touch the ancient prophets spring into life, and the beauty and power of their revelations are made to commend themselves with thrilling interest to all that hear."
* (These people are talking about Joseph Smith, but they might as well, to me, be describing all the best I have experienced from President McConkie, who, by the way, is a great-great-great nephew of Joseph Smith, and a direct descendent of Hyram, who was martyed with the prophet. I don't think it's any coincidence that these quotes remind me of him; it's a family inheritance, a spiritual gift of knowledge and the ability to teach knowledge, that his father, Bruce McConkie, also had, and of course his other ancestor prophets, Joseph Fielding Smith and Joseph F. Smith.)
Well, I have a stepdaughter whom I've never met. She passed away at age three in a freak accident with a boulder rolling off a mountain. A.R.'s sister. She would have been a teenager now. I have often told D.H. that I can't imagine how he survived the pain of such a terrible loss, an indescribable pain. He said that it's impossible to describe. He also said that God gives you, in the moment, what you need to get through that moment.
We get so busy in life that we forget that we're all going to die someday. We're like pretty blown bubbles, floating in the wind for a little while, just a little while. We're all going to attend each other's funerals and cry. It is a fact I don't like to think about. But it pares down the soul to the core.
And it makes me turn to God, in humble faith, that He will hear my prayer and protect me and my family, that we will live long, healthy, happy lives together. And if it is not in His will to grant that prayer, I pray that He will give me His spirit to give me the ability to survive that pain with love still in my heart.
I don't know how anybody mentally faces death without a faith in and knowledge about Jesus Christ. That, I don't get. If I didn't know He had paid for our sins and for the power to resurrect our bodies, to reunite us with friends and family in happiness one day, I would curl up and give up.
I have put all of my eggs in the basket of my belief in Christ.
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