E'D BEEN A FORTUNATE FAMILY, I suppose, though I'm not sure I ever thought about it at the time. We'd seen some deaths, but all folks who'd lived long had. Though no one of any age wants to die, there is a different quality of acceptance when someone dies "old and full of years." An 80-year-old parishioner, contemplating her own imminent death, once comforted me with the observation "Pastor, at my age, you have to realize it isn't the first time the possibility has crossed my mind."

Too Young
But at 55 my father was still a man with a lot of life left. His youngest had just finished college. Two of his children were married, the other two soon to be. His first grandchild, Arielle, was only months old. He should have been anticipating golden years, like his father had, to see his children established, to be a grandpa, to host family picnics and holidays.

None of which was to be.

There were chemotherapy, many prayers, a tearful anointing service, and well-intentioned friends with herbal miracle cures (which I don't think he ever tried).

A year passed, and one autumn day as I was shaking hands with my congregation after church, a deacon nudged me. "Your brother is on the phone, Loren. It sounds important."

"It's time to come home and say goodbye to Dad," my brother said.

The Vigil Begins
The next day I was in a hospital room in North Dakota. I slept in the family lounge that first night, expecting any moment to be summoned for a last farewell. But weeks wore on, and he didn't die. I stayed in Bismarck for about three months that winter, bunking in the attic of friends I will forever cherish for their hospitality. To make things worse, my mother had been diagnosed with lymphoma; she was too sick to be with Dad. So I drove to the hospital and sat by him all of each day. I wanted to be there, for we never knew when the end might come.

As weeks passed he became gaunt. Young, he'd been a robust man. I have my mother's slighter build, but my father was muscular. I remember shoveling grain beside him on the farm; I would wear out long before he did. I always thought him a handsome man. When he was younger, his hair was jet-black, and he had light-blue eyes that we children (who inherited Mom's medium-brown eyes) envied. In middle age his thick hair turned a lovely silvery-white.

Now in a hospital bed at MedCenter One, he was slack skin hanging on bones. Blinking, beeping machines strung with tubes and wires kept him drugged against pain. His eyes were dull; his mouth hung open. His white hair was stringy and thin.

Joining Hands
In our culture grown men don't hold hands with one another. Now, though, I sat by my father's bed and held his hand. Occasionally we talked. Mostly, though, he slept. So I'd sit there, hold his hand, and pray for him, tears in my eyes.

I have a difficult time forming a clear picture of his face during those months. In truth, I didn't like to look at him. He wasn't my strong, handsome father anymore. The cancer had wasted him into a husk of himself. So through the short days of a North Dakota winter, as he went in and out of consciousness, I just sat there (in semidarkness with the blinds pulled because the light hurt his eyes) and held his hand.

I have an almost photographic memory of his hands-of our hands, mine against his. I remember them so well because I remember noticing how much his looked like mine. Older, more calloused, stronger from years of manual work, darker from years of sun, but the same slim fingers, the same square nails with bright half-moons at the base of each.

At one time those hands had done so much. My father was a natural builder. He could repair heavy farm machinery or delicate mechanisms. He could weld metal into heavy machines or fashion wood into fine cabinetry. I remember as a child his strong hands holding me, lifting me. Later his hands were beside mine as he taught me to drive a tractor, his hands showing me how to repair machinery, how to cut wood, how to waterski.

Hands that could now do little. Hands that lay loose at his sides.

As I sat there holding his hand I began to feel so angry. It wasn't right! There was something wrong with a world where things like this happened. Life was never meant to be this way. A person is born, grows, makes friends, has a family, tries to honor their Maker, contributes their part to the world, and for what? To wither and die? What kind of evil thing is this that snatches us away when we still want to live?

We were not made to die, I so often thought. Death is a stranger, and we are his victims. It makes me angry. It is unjust and evil. Yet how helpless we are to do anything about it.

The Stranger Overpowered
Yet (and I often had to remind myself forcibly of this during those dark winter months) at least once the right thing happened. At least once, a long time ago, that stranger, death, was defeated. At least once ("early in the morning the first day of the week") someone found that the one they'd loved, one who had died, was alive again. Someone heard his voice again. Someone talked to him in the first morning light. Someone held his hand late at night in a room of frightened people. Someone met a once-dead man who'd become (by the power of God, praise His name!) fully, vibrantly alive.

You can be a skeptic if you wish. I will certainly understand. Believing in impossible things isn't easy. You can be a skeptic, that is, until you stand at the grave of a loved one. Then you'll know too that death was never meant to be. Then your heart will cry out for a response to the injustice of it.

And perhaps you will know, as I know, that the answer to the injustice came at the first Easter, when Jesus disarmed death by triumphing over it (Col. 2:15).

Hands Reunited
The day is coming when I will hold my father's hand again. It's going to be a glorious day! He's going to be so surprised because he'll see Mom again, this time young and well, not (as he saw her last) with her hair fallen out. Arielle, an infant in his memory, will be a grown young woman. There will be other grandchildren he's never met (Megan and Jacob; Shelby and Logan; Arielle's brother, Cameron), all grown. He'll be strong again, his hair shiny black again, his eyes bright-blue. On that day I'll gather my family around me, Mom and Dad, grandpas and grandmas. We'll take one another by the hands (those hands once so wasted in death, now young and strong again, young and strong forever and ever, amen!) and walk into that Holy City. All of us, together, hand in hand.

There, safe, forever, in our Father's hands.

_________________________
Loren Seibold is senior pastor of the Seventh-day Adventist church in Worthington, Ohio.