Death, Obituary, Legacy

Strange title maybe, but this week I lost a college friend, I will admit I hadn’t seen her in decades but over the years I did hear about her from another friend. I knew she was sick and had tried to send a card but it came back.

I probably didn’t think much more about her other than occasionally I would ask this friend if he had heard anything about how she was doing. If he did, he would let me know and thus I knew she was in Hospice and then passed away. It was a sad day… I remember her always being full of life and with a smile on her face and even now when I think of her, I will remember her in that way. So full of life… and as I read her obituary, she lived a full life…

She skied in Italy with her husband, rode camels in Jordan, played tennis and sailed in the Virgin Islands all things that I will admit sound like fun!! Beats going to Home Depot looking at ceiling fans, getting a new roof or doing grocery shopping at Harris Teeter….

It also said her parties were memorable but when I finished reading I felt sad….

For you see I read Obituaries, or let’s say I do glance at them… It started many years ago when we lived in OKC, and I read one that took up many columns and I remember it telling about every house or place this person lived, and they were in their 90’s. I felt like I knew this stranger after I finished reading it because their obituary was a short biography. So my reading of obits began.

When I read the paper from a town I lived in for many years online, I do glance at the obits, and yes, sometimes I do see people I knew, the mother of a friend, a former principal and then later his wife.

But back to my friend’s I don’t know if she was a believer, but from reading hers, I would say no or if she was, it wasn’t important to the writer of the obit.… and that made me sad… all the things written about her were in the past and was there wasn’t any concern about eternity….

So you see I do smile when I read they passed into the loving arms of their Lord. I feel that their family knows their love one is in a much better place, the home we are looking forward to someday being a resident of.

Having written just one obituary in my life… Phil’s, I wanted his legacy of his faith and family to be known to all…. Where he went to school, the companies he worked for, his service in Vietnam, I left out because to me although to some those were important, to me it wasn’t. I wanted people to know that he had lived a life dedicated to his faith, family and friends and now he was healed and home in the presence of our Lord and Savior.

Strangely several years ago while goggling his mother’s obituary, I found one that I guess his family placed in the Seattle paper and in it were all the things I left out, the schooling, jobs, and military service, I guess to them that was his legacy, but to me, it wasn’t, yes they were things he had done, but that was not the legacy that I wanted people to remember him by.

As I look around this room and being a part of leadership and CBS for so many years, I feel I know the legacy many of you will leave behind, the prayer warriors, the humble servant, the loving friends, but mostly a child of God who when the time comes to leave this world, the loving arms of Jesus will lead you to your eternal home.

As we study Genesis this year, we will study many of the patriarchs of our faith Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and of course Adam, Noah and Joseph. Some will be women, Eve, Sarah, Leah, Rachel along with others. Some of these stories we know from other studies we have been in or from Sunday school classes, but hopefully this study will challenge us to see them in a new way and also glean something new about them…

Back to my friend, she had no children, her husband who is quite a bit older than her has Alzheimer’s and really has no clue of what is going on, she does have a sister and nieces and she does have friends who I know will miss her and remember her smile and cheerful way…. but I am still sad because I guess I wanted her to have passed from this life into the arms of Jesus. I wanted to read, Chicken passed peacefully from this life into the arms of her savior. That would have eased the sadness, as she is now healed. I pray that the friend who lovingly took care of her in those last weeks and days shared the gospel with her.

I want her legacy to be more than skiing, camel rides, sailing and parties…. I want her legacy to be that she was a Child of God…..maybe it was, but I will never know as the person writing about her life between birth and death, didn’t feel it was important….

But I do, I wanted to know that my college roommate would someday be a roommate in heaven…