This year marked both an end and a new beginning for our family. In 2014, we lost my father-in-law to ALS. In 2019, my mother passed away after years of struggling with Alzheimer’s. In 2022, my mother-in-law died after many years of fighting through complications of breast cancer. And this October, my father’s remains joined my mother’s in a small concrete cubby hole in the Columbarium at the U. S. Naval Academy. He was 91 years old when he died in January 2023 — the last of his generation in our immediate family to pass away.
As an only child, I was the one charged with delivering my dad’s eulogy. It was a difficult day for me. The pressure of trying to remember the great man my dad was in a way that would properly honor him was difficult to bear. But once I was past it, a sobering new reality set in.
I am next up.
Triggered By a Football Game
The fact that this holiday season would be our first without at least one of our parents around was logically obvious. We’ve known it was coming for many years. But it didn’t really sink in until my wife and I sat alone in our living room watching the Army-Navy game. My dad and I are both graduates of the Naval Academy. My father-in-law and two of our sons went to West Point. Needless to say, the Army-Navy Game has been an “event” in our house for as long as we can remember.
It’s always been a day filled with mutual respect thinly veiled by non-stop trash talk. And my dad has been the ever-present and sometimes obnoxious Navy cheerleader in our family room — ringing his ship’s bell every time Navy scored — the biggest trash talker of us all.
But this year it was quiet. The pestering was reduced to a group text thread. Our five sons are spread to nearly every corner of America. So, the trash talk was composed of digital one-liners, funny memes, and obnoxious GIFs. When the game ended (does it really matter who won?), I was confronted with the fact that my wife and I were about to spend our first Holiday season as the official patriarch and matriarch of the Perry clan.
That was never a status I longed to achieve.
Reality Sets In
It has gradually dawned on me over the last two months that we are the next Perrys in line to pass naturally into eternity. Standing on that precipice is a sobering reality.
Logic dictates that we are mortals. But when the perception inside your head still seems the same as it did at age 20, it’s hard to convince yourself otherwise. Mortality is something old people are meant to confront, not us.
Yes, we were designed to be immortal. Our Christian faith tells us we are. But living in the here and now grows on us. It disguises itself as the end.
The specter of death is a cruel tyrant. Our fear of it is cloaked in denial. But when those who shield us from confronting that reality vanish, reality pierces the cloak.
What is Time?
I go about my days as if they will never end. But sometimes, I envision myself in moments I’m looking forward to experiencing in the future. Moments like a long-anticipated vacation or the birth of a child or grandchild. As I contemplate those moments approaching, I wonder what it will be like to experience them. Then — weeks, or months, or years later — when the moment finally arrives, I think back to that previous time. Suddenly, I’m exactly where I already imagined myself to be.
It’s as if no time has passed in between.
Time is a weird thing. It came into existence along with the physical world “in the beginning.” God created it and it’s hard to define. Webster tries:
the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues : duration; a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future.
Duration. Present. Future. Even Webster can’t define time without using time-dependent terms. Maybe that’s why it sometimes drags on, and sometimes flies by, all at the same … time.
Time Warp
When my dad was on his deathbed, we knew his time in this world was nearing the end. He could barely talk. His eyes were closed. But I heard him whisper, “Let it go.”
I leaned in and asked him, “Let what go, Dad?”
“Let me go.”
Those were the last words he spoke to me. As I sat there and watched him pass, the weirdness of time confronted me yet again. I did the contemplation thing.
I tried to imagine myself being him.
What will that last moment be like when I get there? Will all the previous moments of my life converge? Will it seem as if no time has passed?
What is it like to step into eternity?
What are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that you think of them? They are like breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow. ~ Psalm 144:3-4
Preparing For The Moment
I can only pray that when my time comes, I will be able to speak to my sons and grandchildren in the way my father did. Or, even better, be able to show the kind of confidence and courage that my wife’s father did.
We were gathered around his hospital bed, each of us having said our goodbyes. The room got quiet. He was intubated and couldn’t speak.
But he could spell.
Using a tap code we had set up for him, he began to compose a message. The process was painstaking, but he was relentless. Writing down the letters he gave us, it took a few minutes before his final thought emerged: “Time to move along.”
He was experiencing the instant when all his moments converged.
I am next up to do the same.
I want to make my end as easy on my surviving family members as I can. So, I will do all the practical things we’re supposed to do — wills, and trusts, and powers-of-attorney. Transfer-on-death orders and funeral arrangements. But all of that is tangential — busy work we do to prepare others for the inevitable fact that our days here are numbered.
We must face that reality in our own way.
Who knows? It may be 30 years from now. Or, it may be 30 minutes. But I am now more aware than I have ever been that my final moment will come. I won’t dwell on it. But I will contemplate it.
I won’t fear it. But I will respect it.
I am next up. And I want to be ready when all my earthly moments roll into one. That glorious instant when I realize that I am right where I was always meant to be.
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. ~ Psalm 90:12
Great family photo. Sorry to hear of the recent loss of your dad. He sounds like a character! Interesting thoughts you shared on time and death. I can relate. God bless.
I enjoyed reading this post. It is amazing the reality of what you said. Contemplation is important as part of the process of getting ready to leave this life and continue our life with our Heavenly Father. It was important that you shared this with your readers! I often in my contemplation of this fact end up wondering and then prayer for those that I know who do not know Jesus as Lord and Savior. He is the only one who can give us peace and comfort that is beyond human comprehension. Thank you for being so transparent!