Death is An Open Window

Once, near the end
My grandfather opened his eyes and breathed
These words into the vacant mouth of death:

“It’s a beautiful day.”

And I wondered which day he meant:

The day which found me weeping by his bed,
Even as the sun glinted off the mountaintops
Surrounding our snow-swept valley

Or that distant, unending Day
Its reflection glimpsed through the thin-veiled window
By one who drew near.

All I know is this:

For a moment, something of eternity shimmered
Through the half-shut curtains of his hospital room, shining
With a faith truer than sight, deeper than words.

“It’s a beautiful day”  he said, for the last time.

And so it was.

And so it is.

And so it shall be.

I wrote this poem in honor of my grandfather, who is still transitioning from life to death to life. I had the privilege of sitting in his presence last week, and what I experienced was hard and holy, tearful and joyful. On the day I wrote it, I was sitting in a sun-flooded room by my grandfather’s bedside. While he slept, I wrote in my journal all I could remember of the sweet things he had said to me over the past few days. 

I don’t know what caused it, but for a startlingly clear moment he took a sharp breath and opened his eyes. He saw me journaling and asked,

“Are you writing a poem?”

“I am,” I said, not wanting to explain that I was instead recording what I sensed were some of his final words to me.

“Oh,” he said, his parched lips forming a pleased smile.

“Do you want any water?” I asked, holding up a cup.

“No thanks. . .It’s a beautiful day,” he said as he slipped back into slumber.

I then proceeded to write a poem because I told my grandpa I was writing one, but mostly because I wanted to immortalize our brief exchange for my own heart’s sake. Our conversation lasted less than thirty seconds, but its beauty and simplicity contained more than I could hold at the time. Poetry is what I do with the overflow of too many feelings at once. It’s how I lean in to the mystery of life and death and all the shades of nuance in between.

“If heaven isn’t real,” I told my tearful grandmother later that day, “If we do not see each other again, if all is not made well one day, then this life isn’t worth living.” 

I didn’t used to think this way. In fact, for many years I didn’t think about heaven much at all.

*

From seventh to tenth grade, I attended a Christian school in North Carolina. From that season, I have retained several oft-repeated Christian phrases—pithy aphorisms slapped on like Band-Aids by well-meaning teachers when a student dared to ask a complex faith-related question. Such phrases have taken on a life of their own, their cacophonical triteness turning and churning in the hamster wheel of my mind like battered bingo balls.

The most perplexing aphorism I heard from a certain teacher prone to distilling the largest questions of the universe into Twitter-worthy remarks was,

“Don’t be so heavenly minded that you’re no earthly good.”

It sounds good, right? But here’s the not-so-subtle message I derived from this cute and confusing phrase:

Don’t get too excited about heaven, kids, or you’ll lose your usefulness to God on earth. Heaven is a distant, far-off reward. For now, we work to earn His favor.

Although his words fueled the flame of the works-based faith already present in my heart, the biggest problem with his statement is this:

We aren’t excited enough about heaven.

In fact, there’s no such thing as being too convinced of the future goodness which awaits us on the other side of the grave.

Heaven is one of those Christian topics that no one knows enough about, so we don’t talk about it. We retain our Sunday school felt board images of golden streets, yummy pink clouds, and chubby cherubs and keep our questions to ourselves. Whatever it is, we hope “heaven” works for us and our loved ones. In the meantime, we try to keep living like death doesn’t exist. 

I didn’t start thinking seriously about heaven until my mother-in-law died. It was then that I desperately needed heaven to be real and not just a vague, hopeful theory. Since that time, I have been paying closer attention to Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of heaven, trying to understand this mysterious yet certain reality.

*

Jesus began his earthly ministry by announcing, “The kingdom at heaven is at hand,” thus inaugurating the kingdom of heaven on earth as a foretaste of the life to come. I find it beautiful that Jesus often used earthy words like “mustard seed, yeast, fishing net, and buried treasure” to describe this present and future kingdom. Much of Jesus’ teaching is centered around helping his followers to recognize and embrace the kingdom of heaven in their midst—a treasure so precious that he didn’t want them to miss it, hidden in plain sight.

It turns out that to be “heavenly-minded” is to be Jesus-minded.

To put it another way, “The only way to be any earthly good is to be heavenly-minded.”

In both life and death, Jesus proclaimed the reality of heaven. When his friend Lazarus died, Jesus visited the home of Lazarus’s sisters, Martha and Mary. Full of grief and faith, Martha runs up to Jesus and says,

“Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask.”

Jesus’s response to Martha is his response to our grief over death, too:

“I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this, Martha?”

Do we believe this?

The first question of the Heidelberg catechism asks:What is your only comfort in life and in death?

Its response is simple:

That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

My middle school teacher was wrong. The only way to walk upon this earth is with hearts full of heaven.

So may our minds be filled with the comfort of eternal life with Jesus.
May we be so full of the hope of heaven that every place we set our foot upon this earth
shines with the light of eternity.
May we be given the eyes of heaven, which are the eyes of Jesus:

Eyes to see desolation as fertile ground for redemption,
to view death as a doorway into life,
and to see our brightest moments on earth
as a mere foretaste of the joy that is to come.

Amen.