My Perspective on Death and Faith

I would like to share my experiences with death and how it has affected my perception of God. Before beginning, I would also like to acknowledge the many men and women who do not believe in a greater power, and who face death and loss with grace and dignity, as well as recognizing those who, as believers, come to very different conclusions than I do when faced with these trials.

I was always afraid of death when growing up, or of losing someone I loved. In some ways I tried to control destiny by such things as staying awake during long international flights as if my alertness could prevent the plane from going down. I had a job out of NY selling advertising in Asia for two years and never once slept on my long flights to and from my business meetings.

So my first brush with death surprised me, considering my total lack of fear. About 18 years ago, I was crossing East 31st street in NY and a taxi came speeding around the corner with the driver looking the other way. One second before being hit, I remember thinking “I’m going to be hit by a car,” and in another second managed to think “That’s ok.” I wasn’t scared or surprised, and I think being surrendered to my fate allowed me to remain relaxed and limp when I was thrown to the other side of the street and knocked unconscious. In any case, none of my bones were broken.

I woke up briefly as they threw open the emergency doors and wheeled me through, and then again as they were cutting the clothes off my body to put the monitors on without disturbing my neck. Then after some hours, I was awake for longer stretches of time, though it was like looking at the world through a long tunnel with just tiny images on the other side. It must have been the shock that caused me to pretend that I was ok, but I think I also felt that I had no one to take care of me if I didn’t pull it together and do it myself. I pretended so well that I was able to leave the hospital the next day, and I (foolishly) returned to work the following Monday. It was later that I started to realize how hurt I was. My boyfriend was frustrated with me for complaining about being in pain until I apologized for missing his birthday, completely forgetting that I had planned a surprise party for him. I couldn’t count backwards, I couldn’t remember things from the week before. All my childhood memories were in black and white, sparking a depression (or linked to one) that I am still treated for today.

So how does that affect my view of God? Well, I feel like he cushioned my fall to spare me, and thus gave me my first strong taste of faith. A couple of years later, a friend of mine was sitting in a café in NY and a woman about my age stepped into the street just in front of the window of the café, was hit by a car and had her head opened, killing her instantly. I wondered why I was spared and not her? I would be hard-pressed to give an explanation to her family, but I believe I am still alive, not because I’m more deserving, but because there is still something here on earth for me to do. In any case, it removed a lot of my fear of death, because I no longer see it as random. There is a time and place for everything and I will not die before my time.

Less than a year later, my second experience with death occurred, and was as bleak as I had always feared growing up. I was living in Asia, and received a call early in the morning that my younger brother had committed suicide. As I heard the words, my chest and face burned hot and my hands and feet went cold; I couldn’t process the reality because of the roaring in my ears. The attempt to get home was straight from a dark comedy, beginning with me and my suitcase on the back of someone’s motorcycle and a plane to Tokyo that was turned around mid-flight due to engine troubles, culminating with a near emergency landing in a blizzard and a break-down in the car going home. Even “home” no longer meant anything since my parents had recently divorced, selling the house I grew up in.

It was a record-breaking cold spell in upstate NY when I followed my father into his apartment following the funeral. (Actually, he took the apartment next to the house I grew up in so I could see someone else’s Christmas decorations still on the porch). Inside the apartment, everything was boxed up, white, sterile and so cold. My father then described to me what happened.

He said, “I came into the kitchen and immediately noticed a strange smell.  I turned the corner into the pantry and saw something on the wall in the living room, but I didn’t know what it was.  I stood there shocked, looking around, thinking—‘the place has been vandalized.’ And then, ‘could Mark have done this since he had been so be upset!’—because there were dark stains all over the living room wall, and at my feet there was what looked like a piece of melted candle.  Then I saw his feet extended from the edge of the bed in my bedroom, and it dawned on me that that what I saw on the floor was part of his skull.  It was at that moment that I realized that he must have shot himself.  I wanted to hug him but I knew that he was gone and it would not help me or help him.  I called 911 and sat down on the sofa, crying while I waited for the people that I knew would be able to help him.”

After I heard this, I went into the bathroom and lay down on the floor next to the toilet and I remember being so cold and dead inside, thinking, “I will never feel joy again. I will never feel love again. I won’t feel anything at all.”

For years, I battled with my concept of God, thinking – if I had been there, I could have stopped him! I could have done something! I could have let him know how worthy he was! Why did God let this happen when he is so powerful? He could have arranged it so I was there, or given Mark the help he needed just in time. This went on until one day, years later, I had a vision of the minutes before Mark’s death. I saw my brother sitting there on the bed with the shotgun in hand, and then I saw God sitting on the bed next to him, and he was crying. What I understood at that moment was that God allows things to happen simply because he gives us a choice to live or die, to take up our life or end it, to follow him or not to. But giving us the choice doesn’t mean he does it coldly without emotion. He gives the choice, and then loves us as a parent loves a child, through good choices and bad.

Spring came, and although my mourning was intense for two years, I did again taste joy and life and love. I moved back to NY, found great friends, a great job, and three years later got married to the man of my dreams. And then, as life would have it, I got plopped back in the spiritual desert (this time, both literally and figuratively). Two months after we were married, my husband and I were asked to spend a year in Africa working for a charity. We accepted and were off a mere 6 months after we tied the knot.

That year seemed a year immersed in death: riots in Ethiopia killing the minister of the church we went to there, riots in Kenya and the near escape of friends of ours, the twin towers hit in NY right near our apartment, and the destruction all around us in Somaliland from years of civil war a decade earlier. I was particularly struck when we were being trained on AIDS in Africa, and the woman said “You are grieving the thousands that died on the attack of the twin towers, but more people than that die from AIDS in this country each week. One of every five people here have AIDS. Look at the two people to your left and the two people to your right. One of them has AIDS, or it’s you.”

So, although I was in some sense of the word, surrounded by death, my third contact with death was still personal and came from a little orphan in Somaliland. We had helped out at the orphanage upon first arriving and then while we were in other countries, we lost some of those babies due to malnutrition. So when we returned I focused a lot on a little baby named “Moguay” left at the doors of the orphanage. “Moguay” means “he has no family.” He was 9 months, but not much bigger than a newborn except for his head. I would often go to the orphanage to rock him and feed him formula from a dropper because he was too weak to suck.

He seemed to be doing better until one morning the orphanage worker came to get me to come and take the baby to the maternity hospital that had just been built. There we tried, with the help of visiting British doctors, to hydrate him, give him oxygen, treat him for diarrhea. The whole time I had him in my arms, talking to him, caressing him and telling him how he was going to grow up and be strong. Noon came, and as I handed him over to the nurse, he suddenly started convulsing. They tried to resuscitate him with mouth-to-mouth and CPR, but it was futile. Finally the head nurse turned to me, lay her hand on my arm and said ‘sorry.’  Then they washed him and wrapped him in a white cloth and handed his body back to me to bring to the orphanage to be buried.

I wept the whole way there with this tiny bundle in my arms, heavier in death than he was in life. I don’t think I felt angry at God for the injustice of this little creature’s life and death, but felt more sorrow that this perfect little child who was once alive would no longer grace this earth. Just as we arrived, another orphan, named Dowood, came to badger us again about getting computers for the older orphans. I responded “Not now Dowood” and handed the baby to the orphanage workers. He looked at me funny and said “Jennie, are you cry?” I said, “Yes.” “Why,” he asked? “Because Moguay is dead.” He looked puzzled and said, “Don’t cry. It’s just an orphan.”

Sometimes we charge God with “What about the starving children in Africa? Why doesn’t he do something?” and draw conclusions that he must either be powerless or calloused.

Later in the day, Dowood came over to talk to another person in our team. He was about 12 and had already made 3 suicide attempts at his young age because of the intense lack of hope and the lack of self worth he felt. My friend later recounted that his purpose in coming was to say, “Other NGO’s give us food and books. But now I know that (your organization) loves us because Jennie cried when Moguay died.”

My husband encourages me that in his short little life, Moguay can remember that at least one person loved him as I held him and talked to him for those two months, and that now he is not suffering anymore. And I believe that God brought good out of a seemingly senseless event because a young orphan boy felt worth for the first time. He saw that an orphan lost is worth crying over.

I guess if I were to conclude in a pithy manner regarding my view on God after having these experiences with death, it is this; he is in complete control over the time and place, he gives us free will but also suffers when we suffer, and he brings good out of things we don’t always understand.

But what goes deeper with me than this understanding is the peace I have in having faced these trials. Unwillingly at the time, and now gratefully, I’ve been strengthened by sorrow.

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