My beloved partner in life, Melba, was a friend of Father Thomas Hopko, the Orthodox theologian who served as Dean of St. Leith stated, “Death is the critically important event, in which the person who dies brings his or her own existence to a conclusion,” and he warned, “Death can be the occasion of great sin, as seen in the frantic efforts to overcome it or to fortify ourselves against it.” I had always hoped that I would be aware of the imminence of my death so that I could face it consciously, and I am grateful that I have the knowledge that I am going to die soon. So then, in the time that remains for me I have one more thing to learn in life, which is to die. Recently I was diagnosed with colo-rectal cancer that has metastasized in my liver. The moment has arrived for me when death has become personal. I have tried to never forget that, unless I die abruptly in an accident or with a heart attack or stroke, sooner or later the subject of death will feel very personal to me when I learn that my own death is imminent. Being a pastor, I considered it a privilege and also an education to linger beside many deathbeds. Happily belonging to the company of Christians whose beliefs and ways of living are counter-cultural to the West in the late modern era, I have always thought that it is wise to keep death not far from my mind. “Nobody wants to die,” they say, and many of us do not even want to think about it.
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