Day 6: Thoughts on Death and Dying

I signed my will today.

#Adulting.

It's an interesting process, this thing of deciding the parameters about how you wish to die (at least the parameters you may have some negligible control over), what happens to your possessions when you die, and what happens to your body when you die. Who will be my executor? Who do I trust to handle my finances? Who do I want the house to go to? Do I care how or where I'm buried? Do I want to donate my organs, and if so, which ones and for what purposes? Do I even need a living will? What's the difference between that and a DNR? Do I want to leave anything to charitable organizations I'm fond of or not? Do I have any specific instructions about how my funeral is to be handled?

It took me nearly four months to complete the paperwork from the time I first contacted my attorney until I signed off on everything today. I wanted time to think and process the implications of some of these decisions (and I also just put it on the back burner for awhile amid a busy work season). I could never know the contingencies of every choice, of course, but I could make some reasonable, prudent decisions along the way and I wanted to do my homework. Signing off on everything today didn't feel like some sort of monumental emotional moment - it was just something practical that needed to be dealt with.

But how often do we actually think about death? And I don't mean in a suicidal kind of way, I just mean it in a very matter-fact sort of way. How often do we think through our own mortality? And how often do we think through what we want to be true of our lives when we reach the end of it, whenever that end may be?

When I was a senior in college, I wrote my own obituary. I still have it. I've often had it tucked inside the cover of my Bible over the years. It wasn't an exercise in morbidity, I can assure you, and I wasn't depressed. It was an exercise done with clear eyes and a sound mind, mostly precipitated by the end of my college career and wondering what I was leaving behind me. If you have a living will, why not have a living obituary? (It was maybe also sparked by a scene from the movie Serendipity, to be honest.) I spoke not of worldly things I wanted to accomplish. I spoke instead of the kind of person I wanted to be, of what I wanted my life and my character to be marked by. But ultimately, I spoke of how I wanted Jesus to be my one magnificent obsession.

What struck me as I wrote that obituary nearly fifteen years ago was that I was writing based on the assumption that I would have decades of life ahead of me. But then the thought occurred to me - what if tomorrow, or next week, or next year, is the end? What if I don't have stretches of time to cultivate all these things I want to be true of my life? Would this obituary be true of me now? Am I seeking to move toward this kind of character today, rather than thinking that I'll somehow mysteriously arrive there at the end of my life?

When I read that obituary now, it brings tears to my eyes in a sad sort of way. They feel like words that were far too easily throw down on paper, where they existed merely in a theoretical or hypothetical state. Because to read these words today just makes me feel like a fraud of a Christian, and if I'm not careful, it's easy for me to descend into some sort of existential crisis. What do I know of following Jesus? What do I know of what it looks like to really love him? What do I know of loving God more than anything else? What do I know of passion, selflessness, humility and obedience? What do I know of multiplying the kingdom of God? What do I know of God's purpose for me in my own generation? These were all things I wrote about all those years ago, things I envisioned for my life, what I wanted to be true of my life when I reached the end of it, whether that was in one year, five years, or five decades. But there are moments when it's easy to give way to the notion that I'm not measuring up to this self-imposed benchmark I set all those years ago.

So, what am I to do? Drown in the abyss of perceived failures and all the ways my present-day self is letting down my college-aged self? 

No. No, instead I take up the words of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:10:

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.

His grace to me has not been without effect. The only living obituary that will ultimately matter is the one God writes. May he not merely make me into the kind of person I wrote about with my own words in my own obituary, but rather the kind of person of which he can say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." That's an obituary worth aiming for.