We Are Dust

Yet hope there was still, and my heart was troubled with it as I went home to do work that night. I ended up awake until 4 AM, a large portion of that time on my knees on the floor, head buried in my futon. Anger gave way to hopelessness even as frustration turned to our Savior for hope, and the contradiction of independent will and that inevitable fatalism we all fall into squeezed prayer after prayer out of my heart and soul, while wringing the salinity from my eyes in lonely little drops. Eventually I faded into sleep, only to wake up to the e-mail: Nick’s dad had passed away. “Fuck!” I thought with the little half-laugh that means I am desperately angry, along with most of the other unclean words that have recently taken up residence in my head language. And that was that. A big fat “No” from our Heavenly Father, who promises us every good thing. Case closed. Sarcasm apparent.

Thursday I flew, along with two of Nick’s other friends, to St. Louis for Mr. Bott’s memorial service. The visitation was that first night, and so we stood in line at Bopp chapel to say something to each of the survived. We mumbled the usual empty condolences and longed for some more tangible way of showing our love and our empathy. How do you make conversation with someone who has lost a family member? But Nick was happy to see us and seemed to be filled with a peace and joy completely out of place under the circumstances; obviously, it flowed straight from the realization that the waxen and cold collection of flesh always in sight, a mere 6 feet away, was not the end of his father. Indeed, it wasn’t his father. Not anymore.

That was the first time I had ever seen a … (shit, how do I call it? A “dead body”? A “corpse”? Certainly not that, and certainly not a “cadaver”. Damn all the insensitive words we use). There was an aura of wrongness about the whole thing: some essence of humanity was missing from the coffin. It was hard to classify the remains inside; here was the physical construction that had loved and raised a family, and had been a part of God’s kingdom on earth, yet I’ve seen figures in a wax museum with more life. It is as I said before–the thing before us was not Mr. Bott, but some kind of outer shell he had shed. I realized with a shock, then, that in death we have proof of the soul, since if nothing left our bodies after death, we wouldn’t be bombarded by this overwhelming sense that something is missing, fled, gone. Blood not circulating and synapses not firing don’t explain that.

Friday morning we attended the funeral at Nick’s church. As at the visitation, the number and diversity of people present were a testament to Nick’s dad’s love and the sphere of good influence he had. Nick himself gave one of two eulogies, and I almost lost it as I saw him up there saying goodbye to his dad, and taking the opportunity to explain why he had the hope that his father was no longer the body, now closed forever to the world, on the pedestal in the center of the church. He shared powerfully, with conviction and joy, and I didn’t wonder that his dad was cheering him on from Heaven, if such things are possible.

For the rest of the weekend, I and Peter and Dave (that had flown in from Stanford) did our best to take Nick’s mind off everything. We visited some of the apparently standard places to eat and hang out in St. Louis, and saw Matrix 3 with Nick and some of his high school friends. Very little of the time was super meaningful, but it was good just to be there with Nick and have that be evidence of our love for him and his family. There’s really nothing to say, anyway, that can make it easier for them. Love, in this case (as in most others, I’d guess), has nothing to do with words, but presence. I can only hope that our small extension of his Stanford community was a comfort to him.

Now I am back at Stanford, and feeling, perhaps to a tenth of a degree, what Nick is probably feeling: what we are doing here is not ultimately what’s important. An A+ in a course, a degree from Stanford, a million-dollar-a-year job…none of these things will stave off the inevitable or bring us closer to the eternal souls of other people. So how do we live in the world while extracting the most, truly long-term, riches from it, when we are advised, and indeed our very nature tells us, not to? Who knows. Trust God and love people, maybe. And keep in mind that someday I will leave behind my own wrinkled shell, trading the copy for the real thing: sharp, beautiful, physical, and real.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
    so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children,
    so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
    he remembers that we are dust.