"At the age of 31, I had never watched anybody die."

Larissa Kaye Batten (LLbeara@aol.com) writes "Soul Food," a weekly column for SpiritSite.com.  

Larissa is a prolific writer whose work has been featured in several publications.

My father-in-law lay in his bed like a doll wrapped in sheets of sterile white.

He could no longer speak or laugh aloud or walk or be grumpy or funny or buy stocks on the Internet for his son or add or subtract the mathematical figures he had relied on for years as an accountant.

After 20 years of having heart attacks, my father-in-law had walked his dog Buttons that morning for the last time.

A neighbor told us that my father-in-law had run into his garage to hide the fact that he wasn’t feeling well. He had crashed into his electric meter and developed a brain hemorrhage. Another neighbor finally convinced him to go to the hospital.

My father-in-law said a few words to his sister in the hospital and fell into a coma for the final hours of his life.

What I experienced in the hours my husband and I spent at the hospital was one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever been given.

At the age of 31, I had never watched anybody die. Nor had I ever seen a dead body. Nor had I ever spent time with someone in a coma. I had never watched a nurse shift the body of somebody who had shifted his body for the last time. I had never been with a husband who had to say goodbye to his father. I had never helped plan a funeral. I had never sat in a crematorium arguing over cremation versus the usual.

As a matter of fact, I had made a point of avoiding most everything that had anything to do with death. After all, who wants to watch the dark face of death creep up on a loved one and take the very breath from him?

When my childhood dog died, I locked myself in a room and cried where my friends could not see me.

When my maternal grandmother died, I went out that night with friends to lose myself in fun.

When my maternal grandfather died, I only had to go home for the closed-casket funeral.

When my paternal grandmother had a stroke and fell into her coma, I had a party and got drunk.

Death was a horrific black face that even my dreams would have loved to purge from them.

Death was something that happened to other people, even people I loved. But it was a wicked end to existence. It was also a wonderful opportunity for me to feel sorry for myself because someone I loved was gone.

I have been to only a few funerals in my life, and even working in nursing homes did not expose me to much death.

I will readily admit that I developed an abundant aversion to anything that had something to do with death.

As a writer, I can write beautiful condolence cards. I can even write poetry to be read at funerals or to decorate the mantlepiece of a house that has lost one of its souls.

When a college boyfriend told me that I was being selfish to mourn the loss of my grandfather, I must have looked at him with the face of death itself. How dare he! He told me I was selfish to not feel joyful that my grandfather had gone on to the Kingdom of Heaven. Needless to say, my boyfriend eventually broke up with me in part because of our differences in religion.

Another boyfriend in college broke up with me because of a difference in religion. I would like to think today that what these men witnessed in me was a lack of light. A lack of spirit. An inability to see the light in dark, the joy in sorrow, the spirit in death.

The death of my father-in-law and his unspoken invitation to visit him in his dying hours afforded me the opportunity to finally witness another face of death.

Retrospectively, I would describe the last hours my husband and I spent with his father as joyful.

He was in a coma. He couldn’t even communicate in the sometimes grumpy but loving way he always had. And yet he gave me the gift of seeing the other face of death.

My husband and I ate pop-tarts on either side of my father-in-law’s bed. We had traveled all day; we were hungry. We talked with him, held his hand, and laughed with him.

His blood pressure went back up when we said something funny. I told him that maybe now he would appreciate how talkative I am. Maybe now he would value the spirituality that I had developed through the years. Now I could pray with him in these hours.

My father-in-law had thought me a bit weird. He said he would never understand me.

In his bed of death, my father-in-law perhaps grew to understand me and my strong sense of spirituality. I know I found an understanding of him.

Soon after we entered his room, I felt his spirit leave. I told my husband this so that we could be with him on his journey on.

I felt the presence of angels in his room, and I know they were there.

We cried when we needed to, but more than anything we experienced another face of death.

We shared all with each other the unconditional love and acceptance that comes with dying. Any resentments and questions were gone. Any pronouncements and difficulties had vanished.

We stood and sat and cried and laughed in the brilliant love and light of death coming.

And when the nurse took my father-in-law off his ventilator and we waited for his last breath that never came, we felt the horrific finality and the exhilarating love and spirit of a man going home to his kingdom.

I was reminded of this experience recently when a new friend shared with me that his step-father had died. I waited for the pain I knew he would share with me. He didn’t.

Instead, my new friend shared his joy with me. He explained that his step-father had received a calling and had answered with his death.

I thank my new friend for sharing with me this other face of death.

For all the sorrow and mourning that comes with death, let me not forget the light that comes with it.

I have never seen a peace as still as the peace on my father-in-law’s face when we said our farewell.

May I remember this face of death when next it comes.

This other face of death is a gift. I am grateful to have seen it.

I thank my father-in-law for teaching me of the spirit.

I thank my husband for sharing with me his father.

And I thank love for showing me its grace.

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