Final thoughts on our final days
We’re coming now to the end of this series on coming to the end of this life. I pray that I’ve helped someone courageously confront the certainty of the body’s mortality and resolve to prepare for it. Ignoring the reality of one’s eventual death will not delay it, only make it more difficult for everyone.
So here are some final thoughts and suggestions on preparing for and managing well the final leg of life’s journey.
Clean out that basement
My brother and I, as co-trustees of our parents’ estate, were charged with the task of cleaning out and selling their home after Mom’s passing. It was a chore but one that was not as great as it would have been had they been packrats. My husband and I may have more stuff in our basement than they had in their larger one.
Having moved from their long time home into this one that they had built, they likely resolved at that time, for their children’s sake, not to let their new home get too cluttered. It’s a resolution my husband and I have made also, but are having some difficulty keeping. We’re working on it, kids!
Help your loved ones bury you
I grew up in a funeral home, which is likely one reason why I have not feared facing my own death. Though the business is not in the family anymore, I still work there and see regularly the value of preplanning and paying for your own final arrangements.
When the time comes, your children and/or spouse are relieved of most of the decisions regarding the disposition of your body and any visitation and/or funeral service. If you’ve prepaid for it, they are also relieved of any financial obligations apart from possible increases in cost of items the funeral home does not directly provide, like flowers or death notices in the local paper.
Finish well
In a comment on a previous installment of this series on aging, a long-time reader said he and his wife were resolved to “finish well . . . and not waste any time the Lord gives us here.” This is a biblical concept seen in the life and teachings of the apostle Paul who, knowing his sentence of death was looming, said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7)
We are on this earth to know and serve God. It is a mandate which does not expire at age 65 and can be fulfilled in countless ways. Like my friends whom I’ve never met, I too want to finish well by continuing until my dying day to represent Christ well and repent when I haven’t. To share the truths about God that I am convinced of and argue against evil and for righteousness in the public square. To love him and thank him and help others do the same.
That’s what this blog has been about since its inception. I periodically feel like closing up shop but I know that this is part of my service to God and he has not released me from it. I owe him my life and he has not demanded too much of me. How could I intentionally fail to shine the light that his indwelling Spirit has made me to be?
If you’ve read this far in my series on growing old, thank you. May God bless you with a greater knowledge of himself and the wisdom to navigate well however many more years he gives you on this earth.
