Opinion: Death “makes us all equal when it comes”

In Atlanta, where we spent Thanksgiving with our younger daughter and her family, the autumn colors were past their peak but still blazing in the bright November sunshine. On my daily walks, the trees rewarded me with an artist’s palette of colors: golds, yellows, oranges, and the most beautiful wine-dark maple leaves I’ve ever seen.

Inside the house things were equally bright. And why wouldn’t they be, thanks to two young grandchildren, ages 5 and 3? Every day they delight us with their insights, antics and humor. (The 3-year-old comedian one day poetically dubbed his mother, “Pajama Momma Head,” a name destined to go down in family lore.) So much joy, laughter and love!

On one day’s walk, I watched two people park at a neighbor’s house, where a gray-haired man greeted them with a hesitant wave. The sign on their car door said “Atlanta Hospice.” Suddenly, my joyful delight came face to face with an unnerving truth. We are all going to die. As the English clergyman poet John Donne once wrote, “Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes.”

The contrast between the two homes gripped my imagination — my daughter’s home so full of joy and laughter and with such a bright future stretching out in front of our two grandchildren; and the neighbors’ home with dreams cut short and every joyful memory tempered by the approach of death.

Death has been on my mind quite a bit lately. I’ve been thinking about the latest series of angry mass killings: members of the UVA football team, patrons at a gay night club in Colorado Springs, Walmart employees in Chesapeake. Like the Biblical prophet Habakkuk, I plead: “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you, ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?”

Just before Thanksgiving we learned that a dear friend of ours, aged 72, had died suddenly from cancer. Regretfully, I never got to tell him how much he meant to me. I’ve also been thinking about death because of a recent class at our church, called “Grave Matters,” in which we learned how to prepare for our own death: planning the details of our funeral service, signing medical directives, preparing a will or trust, and rehearsing conversations with loved ones about our final wishes. It was a sobering reminder of our common mortality.

Several years ago, I read a remarkable book called “Love and Death: My Journey Through the Valley of the Shadow” by Unitarian minister Forrest Church. With incredible bravery he described his battle with terminal cancer. He also shared insights about living in the face of death. Here are two of his pearls of wisdom which inspire me.

“Death is not life’s goal, only life’s terminus. The goal of life is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for. This is where love comes in. The one thing that can’t be taken from us, even by death, is the love we give away before we die.”

“Life is not a given,” he adds. “Life is a wondrous gift. That gift comes with a price attached. One day something will steal it from us. That doesn’t diminish our lives; it increases their value.”

As we packed our car to drive home, I noticed that many of the leaves which graced the trees with beautiful color had since fallen to the ground. Those leaves remind me that the world of nature has a cycle of its own, young blossoms in the spring, full foliage in the summer, and glorious colors in the fall, even as the short, dark days of winter make their approach.

The Rev. Albert G. Butzer III, lives in Norfolk. Prior to retirement, he served as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Virginia Beach.