“Do you ever think about dying?” asked Barbie. I do. Do you? I'm on the eve of my 78th, luckily still alive. I think about dying, but not in a morose way. I stumbled into death at age 18 when I worked for a funeral home that also ran the community’s ambulance service. We’d take the big “S” off the side of the Oldsmobile hearse, put the bubble light on top, and clamp in the stretcher. Sometimes we’d deal with accidental or old age death;…
Bodies I saw life and death in bare detail working for a funeral home. The dead body, having festered for four days, reeked. The stench of its rotting flesh filled the embalming room and, unavoidably, my breathing. Fortunately, in such situations, our smell system overloads and goes numb after a half hour. When a person dies, their body dies gradually. At first, the stagnant blood turns blue and the body heats up. Rigor mortis sets in after about four hours, lactic acid locking the muscles. …
What and who are we, and whither would we go, and why, really? I start to answer these questions, not by copying what others say, or by mouthing what others expect me to say as a minister, but by honestly saying what I think I know. As you know, I entered ministry via a route through embalming. At 18 I looked closely into death. It awakened a wonder at the structure of our bodies and an appreciation for our precious, limited life. Too…
Happy New Year! I know the new year started recently during the Jewish high holy days, and earlier than that at the end of February when the Chinese started theirs, and earlier than that on January 1st. It turns out the year can start almost any time and I don’t mind it starting over and over. As harvest season ends for us in the Northern Hemisphere, Halloween makes as good of a time to end and start the years as any other. Halloween turns…