What I Learned About Life from my Grandfather’s Death

His was the first face I saw as I came down the escalator at the Daytona Beach International Airport. My grandparents, my mom, and my step dad were there that day to welcome me back to America after an exhausting and incredible 11-month journey around the world. I spent that year living out of a backpack, with a tent as a home, and sleeping bag as a bed, the same 3 dirty old tee shirts as a missionary to 11 countries. I was relieved to see my famly. And really tired, and still a little jet-lagged.

 

My first week home was great. I ate Chipotle about 18 times, did loads and loads of laundry, slept in my own bed, read books, and bought real Florida orange juice (Natalie’s of course!). Everything was drenched in a new freedom and I felt like the whole world was at my fingertips. My future was a complete mystery but still so incredibly exciting because of all the possibilities and dreams that had been forming in my heart during the Race. I felt like the Race was a catalyst for my best years that still lie ahead of me.

 

And then my mom called. She said some stuff that I didn’t really understand but all I absorbed from the conversation was Grandpa was in the ER, and something about a guy named Billy Reuben. As it turns out, Billy Reuben is not a man. Bilirubin is a medical term. And this medical term was our first indicator that something was really wrong. We did our research and we found that high levels of bilirubin in the blood can be indicative of liver diseases and sometimes pancreatic cancer.

 Cancer. Pancreatic Cancer. When I heard those words, my heart stopped beating. I smirked to myself because I typically avoid crying by engaging a huge grin, but it felt out of place in the heavy silence of such a sterile room. I looked at my Grandpa sitting tall, feet dangling off the patient’s table, with his hands folded tightly in front of him, as he received those words with tears in his eyes. And he asked the doctor the question we were all silently contemplating, “How long”? My heart stopped again as we waited for an answer.

 Honestly, it doesn’t really matter what the Doctor told us that afternoon. It wasn’t long enough; it’s never long enough. I looked up at my grandpa and I felt the weight of our present dichotomy: what felt like the beginning of my life was simultaneously the end of his. And suddenly I wanted to hear all the stories I had always heard just one more time. And I wanted to know everything I could know about his life, and his dreams, and his failures, and his worst days, and his best days. I needed to permanently intertwine his memory and life into my own soul so that he would never actually die.

 

So that’s what I did. I studied everything about him, I asked him difficult questions, and I tried to engrave his existence into my memory. His answers to my questions were mostly simple, but I could see in his eyes what he could not express in his words. His deep dark eyes begged me to live a life that exceeded my perceived potential. He insisted, without instruction to live a life of depth and richness because he had seen glimpses of it in his own lifetime. And He implored me to fight for a better story.

 

Fight for days filled with joy and laughter, beauty and grace, courage and adventure. Fight for days filled with tears and sadness and sharing burdens with each other. Fight for everything that is real. Do not settle for living in between, in the valley of the shadow… of life. Often when we hear that phrase it is succeeded by the word death. The connotation is a situation where death or fear is imminent, but I think we should be most fearful of living in the valley of the shadow of life. Why are we tempted to sit stagnant when we could be moving forward, further up and further in to the beauty awaiting our bold hearts. Don’t ever loose sight of the heavenly realities that are here and now for us. “On Earth as it is in Heaven” was for today. We don’t need to wait for Heaven to come to Earth, it already has. And now we are seekers of an eternal Kingdom in an ephemeral lifetime.

 

A few months ago, I was sitting at the cards/ dinner table with my Grandpa and he asked me if I would read something at his funeral. I, in typical fashion of avoidance, tried to make a joke about it. I told him I would love to read something and asked him what he had in mind, maybe one of the classics like “Great Expectations” or Shakespeare would be nice. I then informed him that I wouldn’t mind reading something a little more current either, perhaps excerpts from Regis Philbin’s new book or “Unbroken” would be more suitable. He chuckled and shook his head as we moved on to the next subject but he never did specify what I was supposed to be reading. So today Clive Staples Lewis is my author of choice with excerpts from “The Last Battle”.

 

“And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” 

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!” 

 

 

These thoughts inundated my heart and head 6 months ago. I mentally outlined this while on a long run one afternoon and I knew I needed to write it all down eventually. I knew that Grandpa needed to hear that someone had heeded his advice to live a story that reflects Heaven. But I never got to write it before he left this Earth so now it’s for all of you. May we always be encouraged to go further up and further in.