November
Month to recall death
(Holding a leaf) Falling yellow leaves makes me think of death and life.
November is a month to remember the dead. Novemebr 1st is All Saints Day that celebrates saintly people among us who lived and died well. November 2nd is All Souls Day that remembers the dead for whom we pray.
We all have someone dead and dear to us. I think of my mother, my grandpa, and my brother priest. I pray for them which means to me that I am going to be with them sooner than I think. November is a month to recall our time for death.
The most difficult question to us in November would be what will happen to us when we die? Are we ever capable of accepting death in peace?
When I think of death, I remember Fr. Clem who was a Jesuit and my spiritual director for two years. When he retired from a retreat center, he moved to a parish where I was working in Cleveland to live with me.
Fr. Clem was a joyful and energetic man who had passion for preaching and teaching. After I left the parish, I heard that he got a lung cancer and had a couple of months to live. I visited him. He looked nothing left in him. I asked if he was afraid of death. He replied,
“When I am not able to open my eyes from sleep, it is death which I am not afraid of.”
I asked his last blessing like the fathers in the scripture. He put his two hands over my head and started saying a prayer. I heard some words like father, love, spirit, feeling his shaking hands getting heavier over my head. I sobbed under his final blessing.
“None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s”(Rom 14,8).
Death is hard to accept and yet it is also a beautiful thing: so colorful and meaningful. Without death there is no life.
I am not saying that I am not afraid of death, rather I hope to say someday I would take it as an invitation from the Lord of both the living and the dead. A loving invitation to somewhere I could never imagine and to someone whom I love most.
