Aunt Sally and I in Ketchikan, Alaska
My Great Aunt Sally was an interesting woman. She was unmarried, lived her entire life in the past (the 50s to be exact), drove three miles or less per day in her '67 Cutlass S with less than 100,000 miles on it, and had stuffed animal children to replace the ones the never had. She did not like listening to music and enjoyed quiet time by herself. Everything had a place in her home. If you moved a magazine, she would know it, and heaven forbid you touch the calendars from the past seven years on the kitchen table! The last time my aunt and I say one another was when she began her slow decline. I went with her on an Alaskan cruise.
Up until she was in her late 60s, she smoked a lot of cigarettes. Once my mother caught me smoking as a teenager. I remember her warning: "Don't smoke or you'll end up like your Aunt Sally!" she threatened. Thank goodness I quit, yet complications from decades of unrestrained tobacco use ravaged this woman for years. I do not know the exact number of times she had been hospitalized over the past five years, but it would have rivaled at least that many years. I began to think that she was too stubborn for death because each time she left the hospital just as firey as when she went in. One of my older sisters admitted that she was beginning to think Aunt Sally would never die and that was that.
This past Christmas, though, I thought for sure Aunt Sally was in the midst of her last hospital visit. I may have just begun preparing my heart for her imminent death out of self-preservation because of how tired I was getting with the ups and downs of her health problems, or maybe something "other-worldly" clued me into the fact that eventually, her will would cease to bend and would break, leaving her with the same end that all before her also met. Once again, though, she up and left the hospital. This past week, however, she was taken unexpectedly, well as unexpectedly as she possibly could have been taken, considering the fact that some of us were beginning to think she was immortal. Pneumonia finally brought her to the hospital bed she would not climb out of. Within 48 hours of being admitted she was gone.This morning, just before 9 am, she was just gone.
I have spent the first part of this year thinking a lot about heaven; what it is like, and who will be there. Times have been hard and filled with mourning. Lives have been lost. Dreams have been shattered. Hearts have been broken. A book written by a pastor, Don Piper, called 90 Minutes in Heaven was my latest read on the topic. Don was in a horrific car accident that left him without a pulse for an hour and a half. While someone prayed over his lifeless body, still stuck in a mangled vehicle, Don claims to have been present in heaven. He did not see God and is convinced that if he did, he would not have come back to Earth to tell his story.Don describes heaven as a place where "time had no meaning," where senses were so acute that "I felt as if I had never seen, heard, or felt anything so real before," a place where perfect love could finally be experienced. When he got to the gates of heaven, Don was met by those who had loved him here on Earth, friends, family, those who were pivotal to securing his place in heaven and encouraging him on his journey there.
I felt loved- more loved than ever before in my life. They didn't say they loved me. I don't remember what words they spoke. When they gazed at me, I knew what the Bible means by perfect love. It emanated from every person who surrounded me.
What I cling to most about Don's story of heaven is its music:
It was the most beautiful and pleasant sound I've ever heard, and it didn't stop. It was like a song that goes on forever. I felt awestruck, wanting only to listen... the most remarkable thing to me was that hundreds of songs were being sung at the same time... I heard them from every direction... Every sound blended, and each voice or instrument enhanced the others... bringing not only a deep peace but the greatest feeling of joy I've ever experienced.
As my Great Aunt lay in her death bed, and at the encouragement of one of my aunts who was by her side, I told Aunt Sally the best I could about everything that I have ever heard about heaven. I was sleep deprived and my heart was breaking, but on the off chance that she could hear me speaking and that she could feel the longing for something other than everything she had ever known on this Earth, I once again told her about Jesus, the lover of my heart. I told her to go to Him. The last few minutes of her life were filled with my voice trying desperately to put into coherent sentences meaningful combinations of the words others had spoken to me, all that I have read, and all that I long for here on Earth that I am sure exists in heaven. I had just told her about heaven's music, as per Don Piper, when she quietly drew her last breath and her heart finally stopped. The Bible says about the lives of humans, "You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:14, NIV, 1984). Today, I realized just how short that little while really is. There never seems to be enough time, even when there are more than 70 years between birth and death.
Before she fell into a coma two days ago, my Aunt Sally had not accepted Jesus Christ as the lover of her soul. I'm not sure why, however, she did claim to "believe in something, but it's not what you believe." That is the best answer anyone ever got from her. I am sad and have lots of questions because I love my aunt and want nothing more than to spend eternity with her when I am called to go home. My heart breaks when I think that she may not be in my own welcoming party at the gates when I enter into a life with no more pain, suffering, or discontent, the life I was meant to have here on Earth. I find comfort in knowing that there is no man or woman who really knows what happens in those last moments of a person's life. I know that no one comes to the father expect through Jesus, yet I am still coming to grips with who God is and what he can do. I know that He is big, and right now, I pray that He is bigger than my tiny, infinitesimal brain, which uses less than 10% of what it is capable of, can wrap itself around.
The death of my aunt reminds me of a couple of things, the first of which is that I do not want to leave my family with the same questions I have of my aunt. The second was mentioned by one of my sisters after I texted them all that our aunt had passed: "Death is always a good reminder to check my priorities for this one and only life I have," she wrote back. "Don't waste it, dear sisters, don't waste it."
I will not waste it.
