Thoughts on Mortality During the Plague
In my early teens, I developed ulcerative colitis, a chronic autoimmune disease that brought me down to eighty pounds and nearly killed me. I’ve almost died multiple times while driving, and most recently, moved to New York City just as the plague that will apparently destroy civilization hit the East Coast.
I’ve always believed I would die young, and this premonition has brought with it a constant awareness of my mortality. We may approach death with a different set of fears and false narratives, but I hope this exploration of mine helps us both.
Loss of Life
There is so much I still want to do and become. I want to take some friends and drive Route 66 to the Pacific for a 1950s summer of surfing and volleyball. I want to travel Ireland on foot, finishing Patrick’s ancient quest to bring the Gospel to the Celts. I want to become a hobo and a chimney sweep, write a novel in Paris, and go on a backroads music tour, playing old time rock ’n roll at local dives.
One lifetime, as Zsa Zsa Gabor said, is not enough.
I’m afraid I won’t get to it all, or that something terrible like paralyzation, bankruptcy, or societal collapse will preclude these things. But these hopes and fears are fixated on a future outside of my control – a future that is both unknowable and uncertain. Life is a constantly unfolding journey, and we neither know where it is going or when it will end. All we have been given is this moment, and all we can do is live it in these imperfect conditions, being faithful with the present and trusting God with the future.
Inability to Create
As an artist, I’m not afraid of death, so much as the inability to create. I imagine the world would be a lesser place if Van Gogh died before painting The Starry Night or Andrew Lloyd Webber before writing Phantom of the Opera. Though my own work will never reach this level of glory, it has the ability to touch people’s lives, and I don’t want to die until I’ve done so.
Victor Hugo said, “Don’t die with your song still in you.” But we all do. There are so many songs in me, so many verses and choruses I’m discovering and writing, and when any of us dies, it is a permanent interruption of what we had it in us to accomplish.
The older I get, the more I feel a mad urgency to create – to build a legacy that touches others and leaves some imprint on eternity. I want to understand and articulate a narrative for my life that makes sense to me and inspires others. But what if none of this happens? What if I just die – a small life with a seemingly random end, soon forgotten?
The fact is, God doesn’t need me to create. My life purpose is not wrapped up in the work I do for God, but the work He is doing in and through me. He is spinning an enormous tapestry throughout human history that shows His glory, and I get to be in it, for however long my thread lasts. I don’t need to understand my place in it, and others don’t have to remember my life or art in order for God to do what He wants in and through me.
My job is to reflect Christ wherever, however, and for however long He decides. When my thread is cut, the world will not be less for the songs I failed to sing.
Death as Friend
Having never died before, it’s easy to think this life is all there is, and death marks the end. I feel like I’m running out of time in my desperate attempt to do and create everything I want to before it ends.
But this life is just the first act of an endless symphony, and at the moment of death I will live forever. Not in the pages of human history or the memories of those who knew me, but in reality – in the presence of my Creator, my work done, my work just begun.
It’s staggering to think that I will see God. I know my sin – I know how selfish, ugly, petty, and lustful I am. The idea that I will one day see my Creator, so pure and holy the angels cover their faces, and He will embrace me as His son, is almost unthinkable. It is too humbling.
I read about Christ, pray to Him every day, talk about Him, and one day soon I will actually see Him face to face, so much more loving, good, and glorious than I could possibly imagine. Eternity is so enormous, I can not comprehend it, so I stop trying. I get so used to hearing about the love of God, that I grow numb to the idea that the Creator of the Universe actually and deeply loves me.
I already live in light of my mortality, but I wonder how different life would be if lived in light of my immortality.
J.
Feb. 26, 2020