DEATH. It’s such a strange thing. One minute you see life in someone, and the next day you see them covered with a sheet over their face. The EMTs checking for any sign of life, the EKG machine hooked to her chest to check if a heartbeat is stil there, and then the final blow of anticipation is gone as he covers her face back up with the sheet.
I stand outside the doorway and look at her lifeless body. I ask the man in the emergency apparel just to make sure I’m not making hopeful assumptions.
“Yeah, she’s been gone for a while. Probably late last night. No one found her until 8:45 this morning. No history of epilepsy but that may have been what took her.”
I just stand in the doorway, still, quiet. I look at her. Her body no longer trembling, her pain no longer there. Her arms that had fallen limp as the EMT checked the pulse in her wrist.
Not even a week before, she had fallen and fractured her hip, the pain already severe enough with the trembling that convulsed her body in control. They loaded her in the bed of the truck with her broken hip at that point. Injustice raged in my teammates who went with her to the hospital that day and waited for over 9 hours in order to be seen by the doctor. She was only nearly 50, but the pain that took a toll on her body made her look like she was in her early 70s.
Today, as I was trimming the shrubs, the ambulance rolled up and two EMTs got out and greeted us. I thought that maybe they were simply returning the man who I thought I was almost going to lose yesterday when I was holding a bloody towel, trying to stop the vast amount of blood that was pooling out of his head. I hadn’t heard what the outcome of his situation was, after his unsteady walking had landed him head first on a brick the day before. I had gone to the hospital with him that afternoon so that he could get stitches, only to return home early the next morning. When he had returned, he fell again, re-hitting his head again in the same spot, this time, his eye completely swollen, swelling the size of a softball covering the whole left side of his forehead/eye, blood seeping out as I tried to wrap his head up to stop it. Drifting in and out of consciousness, this man laid on the couch before me as I applied pressure and prayed for the ambulance to hurry up after hearing they could take up to an hour to get there.
“Yeah, the ambulances usually take their time when they get calls from us”, says my host who oversees Eden ministries.
Righteous anger burns within me. How could society have such a view of the mentally ill that the dignity of their very lives is not important enough to rush to a scene of emergency when called?? As I sit with this man, watching him lose way too much blood at my very hands, I wonder what I would do if he were to stop breathing, start having a seizure, or something else I’m not trained to deal with. It’s almost humorous how ridiculous of a scene this is but I thank the Lord he is with me the entire time. My prayers do not stop or waver as I sit and wait for medical professionals to show up because God knows that if I stop, I would lose all wisdom, peace, and patience.
Back to today: the ambulance shows up and once I realize that the man who was injured yesterday wasn’t with them, I figure there must be something else that is wrong.
“A call on an epileptic?” they ask from outside the gate where I’m helping trim some shrubs.
“Umm…I’m not sure! Let me check.” I go into the office to try and find the caregiver on hand and ask where the ambulance is needed.
They start unloading the EKG machine on the stretcher, along with their bag of medical supplies. They are lead through the gate and in the back door as I try and find out where the situation is. The caregiver leads them down the women’s hallway downstairs and points to the end room.
“In there. I went to find her to give her meds because she didn’t show up to the med line, and I found her like this.”
The EMT opens the door and this sweet woman who I just talked to yesterday is lying on the bed with a sheet over her face.
He unloads his machine and goes in with a flashlight, checks her eyes, her pulse, and attaches the EKG to her chest. I wait as the machine turns on and he turns it back off 15 seconds later. Then, they pick up their stuff and leave the room to start filling out the paperwork on her death.
I walk back to the rest of my teammates and one of them sees the saddened look written on my face.
“Is everything okay?” my teammate Clarissa asks.
I shake my head no and bring them away from the resident who was helping us to tell them the news. We all stand there in shock, what do we do now??
One of the residents walks up to us and asks: “Did L* go to be with the Lord? Did she die? She’s with Jesus now?”
Yes. Yes, my sweet friend, she is with the Lord now. It’s bittersweet actually. My teammate Blair Grace said it best, “you know, I’m happy for her, it’s the Lord’s perfect timing. She was one of my favorite residents here, and one of the ones that I saw that gave me such a righteous anger because of the injustice that I wanted any type of healing for her. Shes no longer in pain, she was in so much pain. And she has a brand-new body that is without blemish or brokenness.”
That’s exactly it. As I was sitting and processing all this today the Lord gave me a revelation. Yes, death conquered over her physical body, but it will NEVER conquer her spirit. Death is physical, something that Satan desires to see as the end all of someone. But for sweet L*, her spirit is more alive than ever, and death will never conquer over that. For the Lord has renewed her spirit, he has given her a new body, a new mind, and a place to call forever home because she said yes to Him. I think of my sweet grandpa who passed away just 2 months ago, and I have great joy over that because he too is sitting at the right hand of the Father.
For today, I sit with hope. Hope that death is not the end all for those who have said YES to the Lord. Death has a hold on those with those even still with a heartbeat. The famous saying “everybody dies but not everyone lives”, reigns true with our reality now. I awaken spirits that are DEAD to become ALIVE. For I believe in the power of the resurrected Christ not only then, but NOW, in the resurrection of our DEAD spirits to LIFE. I am proclaiming LIFE over every one of you. Life that you can feel in your bones, in your flesh, in your spirit. Life that is eternal; for living in the Spirit doesn’t start after you physically die. It starts now.
