"The Dying Time"

April 6, 2006

There was a funeral in the podyezhd next door this morning. I only noticed it because I stepped out on the balcony to bring in a drying shirt that was flapping against the bars in the strong breeze. I glanced down between the bars of the railing to the left, and there was a small group of people gathered together. A table, covered by a white cloth, was set out on the sidewalk in front of the door to the stair well. On the table were several items of food and a couple flowers. In front of the table, on the sidewalk between our building and the street, an open casket was balanced on two stools. It was just a little too far away for me to be able to see who was in the casket, but it looked like a woman. I have met several people who live in the entrance next door, so it may have been one of my acquaintances. Or, it could have been an old babushka I’ve never seen. As I stood watching for a few minutes, a car drove up and stopped in front of that podyezhd. The passenger door opened and a Ukrainian Orthodox priest got out. He was dressed in black robes and carried an incense holder on a chain and a Bible. He stepped up to the small group of people gathered there and began the funeral service. I turned and came back into the apartment.

Death in Ukraine is very “in your face.” In the States we hide death. Oh, don’t get me wrong! We watch “death” all the time in our movies and television programs, we read about it in books and stories, and we even have songs about people dying. But we hide “real death.” We do our best to ignore the fact that someday we will die – I will die, my husband will die, my children will die and so forth and so on. We use words like “pass away” and “gone to a better place” and even slang terms like “kick the bucket.” But how often do we hear the phrase – “XXX died yesterday.”

When Mel was pastoring the church out at Peyton, in the space of just one year we had several deaths in the community, a community of just 300-400 people. Mel officiated at nine funerals. Two of them were emotionally difficult for us as they were close friends of ours in the community – one death by a terrible truck accident and the other by a mysterious illness that turned out to be cancer of the blood vessels. One funeral was for a suicide and another was a murder victim. One of the saddest was the death of a newborn baby, the second newborn that young family had lost in two years. We listed them all out at the end of the year and realized that none of the deaths had been of ‘natural causes’ or simple old age.

I have only been with one person when they died, and that was my dear friend who died of cancer of the blood vessels. People talk of how ugly death is – and it is ugly. It is not the state we were created for. Our bodies were created to live, and to live fully and eternally. Death is truly our enemy.

Yet in another way, death is wonderful – death for a Believer in Christ. A passing from this sinful world into His presence, leaving the imperfect for the perfect. How thankful I am that in Christ Jesus I have that hope of death not being the end of all there is, but of knowing that it is just the passageway into life eternal.

The funeral is over now. Everyone has gone to the cemetery. After internment, the friends and relatives will probably go some place and eat a meal together.

It is a cold spring day. I was told by one of our young friends that spring is known as “the dying time.” I thought that odd, because I’ve always thought of spring as being the time of new life, new beginnings (baby chicks peeping, daffodils and tulips poking their way up out of the earth to burst into glorious bloom, little lambs frolicking in fresh green fields….). She explained. The winters are so difficult – bone chilling cold with little heat, and often there is hunger such as we in America have never known. Many people have the physical reserves to make it through the darkest part of the year, and then die when spring arrives.

I find that very sad.