Everyone I know goes away in the end
There are only a few things that are completely real for the singular and alone person. Birth seems to be a partnership between the child and the mother but in the end, the child has to take responsibility for whether it makes it into the world or not. I know we never think of it that way because the child has helping parents. The mother’s body is designed to propel the child into the world, naked and alert, but still the child has to find its way, even cry its way into existence. Regardless, it is a lonely enterprise being born, admittedly the mother and father take up their positions of love and support for the child, but the child had no idea what was coming nor knew how challenging it would be to see the faces of its parents. My point is, the moment just before birth is a lonely and bewildering space whereby we experience the most profound moment of our lives.
On the other end is death. It too is a venture into the unknown while alone. While family and friends may be at your side, it is really the singular You taking on this journey, no backpack, no guidebooks in your pocket, just you and you alone.
This is the way Job explains it in the first chapter of that book of wisdom.
21 He said, “I was born with nothing, and I will die with nothing. The Lord gave, and now he has taken away. May his name be praised!”Job 1:21
Job himself bookends his life with birth and death, the two loneliest times in his life. I am not suggesting that this loneliness is forbidden or readily understood, much less adopted. I am only recognizing that these two moments and the surrounding minutes are a time of aloneness.
The outlaw musician Johnny Cash made some of the same points in a song he borrowed from the band Nine Inch Nails. I don’t imagine most readers of this blog will be acquainted with them since they perform music that most of us do not prefer. As for Cash; we might be a bit more receptive to his music. He took this song and made it an anthem of sorts and there is a powerful line in the song, “Everyone I know goes away in the end.”
I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s realWhat have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the endIf I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way
Cash was no wallflower, no shining example of how to live a good life, whatever that was. In fact, he was a rebel with a black heart at times. He inflicted pain on others and a lot of pain on himself as well in the form of drugs and other activities. In some ways, I like to compare him to King David, but that is for another series of posts. My point is, Cash was a musician and used some of his music to call our attention to what he thought was important.
Near the end of his life he took the words of this song to encourage the listener to ask the question(s), What have I become, What I would do if I could start over again, How important to find a better way, How lonely he was without his sweetest friend and a Better use of pain. How long did Johnny Cash live after the song Hurt? He died seven months later, on September 12. His wife, June Carter Cash, who participated in the video of the song, died three months after filming, on May 15, closely preceding him in death.
Cash and Job could relate and commiserate if they were ever to meet with each other, something I hope will happen where the sweetest music ever played will be heard. Cash’s borrowed point is a good starting place for this series of talks/posts about death and the meaning of death and suffering and how everyone goes away in the end. I am sure that Job gave great thought to these issues. I don’t know if Job spent much time thinking about his immortality and ours, but at some point it was thrust on him so violently that he could not think of anything else. This is where we have an advantage over Job and might learn something from him, we have time before the terrible storm that came into his family and destroyed his way of life.
Most of us have experienced loss. There is more loss to come. Will we remain clear eyed and heart strong or will the losses take us under? I don’t like that sentence much because it feels like I am judging those that never seem to come out of the other side of their grief. I am not. I am however, offering hope, that like Cash or Job or so many others, God has been through all of this and will make all things right in the end.
