death – Page 5

Taylor Lane Anderson, a fellow Virginian, became last Monday the first known American to have died in Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. The twenty-four-year-old had spent the last two and a half years fulfilling what had become her dream—to teach English in Japan.

The story in the newspaper was accompanied by a photo of the street on which she was last seen. It was that eerie time just after the earthquake and before the wave hit. Taylor was riding her bicycle home from an elementary school in the city of Ishinoma-ki.

Use your imagination, and you will see houses and storefronts and perhaps children playing on the street corners. You will see that strange combination of resistance and joy that defines human life everywhere, that sort that makes you feel melancholy but happy to be alive.

That’s not the picture the photograph displays, however. All you see is death and destruction.

Though I do my best not to, all I can think of is her last thoughts as that wall of water came rushing toward her. I like to think it was fast. I like to think it was over before she knew it was upon her and that she didn’t suffer.

Derek Kannemeyer is a French and English teacher at St. Catherine’s, the school which Taylor once attended. In the article, he described his former student’s philosophy of life this way:

“You’ve got to go out in the world and live.”

This is the first time I’ve written about the events in Japan. I’ve wanted to ever since it happened, but I just…couldn’t. There are a great many things in this world meant to be written about by better writers than I, and what happened in Japan is one of those things. It raises questions in me about the things I believe and why I believe them. I’ve done my fair share of questioning God and shaking my fist at Him.

You should know better, I tell Him. Why didn’t You do something?

People smarter than me have been asking that question for a very, very long time. I suppose they always will.

Me, I have no answers. There is a lot in Christianity that must be accepted on faith. It is a rock you can break yourself against, that can tear you to pieces, unless you realize there are answers only God can know and you never will.

I still struggle with that.

But today I am thinking of Taylor Lane Anderson, whose life was cut short by shaking earth and raging ocean, but who still chased and managed to grab hold of her dreams. Her death was a sad tragedy, but knowing she died doing what she loved somehow takes a bit of the sting away. In the end, death that comes out of fulfilling our purpose is something to which we should all aspire.

I still question God. I doubt neither His existence nor His love, but I do His ways. They are higher than my ways, Isaiah said, as His thoughts are higher than my thoughts. I believe that. But believing that also brings a mixture of calm and fear, and I don’t believe I’m the only one to feel such things.

It is a scary time to be alive. There just seems to be so much going on—so much bad. There are days when I feel as though a black cloud hangs over this world, rumbling and swirling and ready to dump catastrophe upon us all. It’s easy to wake up in the morning and wonder, “What’s next?”

I’m sure I’ll wonder what’s next again, sure I’ll look up hoping to see the light and instead see that black, swirling cloud. When I do, I’m going to remember Taylor Lane Anderson. I’m going to remember the way she lived her life.

Because no matter what happens, no matter what fear entangles us, we’ve got to go out in the world and live.

Not only survive. Not just get by.

Live.

I’m going to die on November 5, 2055. So says the nifty little quiz I just filled out on the internet. And though it’s hard to put much faith in the accuracy of a prediction based in part on how often I recycle (question number five), this is good information to have. Because whether the date is exact or not, the truth of it is.

One day, I’m going to die.

November 5, 2055, does seem reasonable. I’ll be eighty-three years old then, and my children will be in their late forties. I’ll most likely have grandchildren, be retired, and spend most of my days telling everyone who will listen that the world was a much better place back in 2009.

So yes, dying at eighty-three would be okay with me. That’s a good age to smile at this world and wave goodbye, right there in the meaty part between hanging around too long and not long enough.

At least, that’s what I thought. I’m not so sure now. Having forty-six years left for me to finish whatever it is I want to start seems like a lot of time, but it isn’t when you start to dig a little deeper. Trust me. Because that’s what I did.

If the scribbles on the sheet of paper in front of me are right, most of my remaining forty-six years are already spoken for. I’ll spend twelve of them sleeping, three eating, ten either exercising or resting, and another ten just on home maintenance.

All of which leaves me with a grand total of eleven years to live. One hundred and thirty-two months to make a difference.

Not a lot, is it? Especially considering the fact that November 5, 2055 is at best an approximation and at worst a clever marketing ploy designed to deluge me with junk mail. My end may come later. It may also come before I finish writing this. I don’t know.
None of us do.

Which is why it amazes me that we always think there is time. Plenty of time. There’s always tomorrow, we say. And that may be true for some of us. But not for everyone.

About 146,000 people in the world will wake up this morning thinking there’s plenty of time, not knowing this will be their last day in this life. That’s 6,098 people an hour, 102 people every minute, and about 2 per second. In the time it took you to read this paragraph, twenty people have died.

Amazing, isn’t it? Sad, too. Not because our lives must end, but because the thought of death rarely crosses our minds.

Life fools us into thinking it is this hulking, indestructible beast, when it’s really as fragile as a porcelain figurine . It is holy and sacred and fleeting and never guaranteed. Believing otherwise is not only dangerous to us, it’s dangerous to how we live.

The truth? We don’t have plenty of time. Our every breath is the oil that moves the gears of our days, sending us closer to the moment when we say goodbye to this world and hello to the next. We can’t put off chasing that dream. We can’t delay making those amends. We can’t wait to say “I love you” or “I’m sorry.”

We can’t linger when it comes to the things that make living worthwhile, the people and the dreams that give us meaning. We have to take care of them every minute, every moment. Because maybe they or we won’t be here the next.

There is no time for doubts. No time for hate. No time for hanging on when it’s time to let go and letting go when it’s time to hang on. We get one shot at this world, one chance to do something good and right and true. That time isn’t later. It’s now.

Don’t think it’s never too late. Because sometimes it is.

(This post was first published as a column by the Staunton, VA News Leader)

Go out in the world and live

A matter of time

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