You Just Never Know

Old Bill is dead; ate by a bear.

He was a logger, trapper and big game guide with more years of bush experience under his belt than I have total years hung on my gnarled 62-year-old frame. He was about 80 years old and in better shape than I am at 20 years his junior. And he died in his own backyard, right in his apple orchard. As far as I know there wasn’t enough left of old Bill when they found him to conclusively prove whether the bear killed him and ate him or just found him and pulled up a chair. There is however, little doubt in the minds of folks who knew Bill well and in the minds of the friends that found what remained of him and studied the evidence at the scene. Killed and ate by a bear in his own backyard, they said. You just never know.

I first met Bill about 23 years ago when we moved to the Cariboo. I talked with him whenever our town days collided. And he is the second person I know who has been killed and eaten by a bear, virtually in his own backyard. The first was on the Chilcotin side of the Fraser River a few years back when a black bear knocked Sven off his horse while tending cows on his own range. You just never know.

We all know we are going to die. Most of us who have aged just a whisker beyond the immortal teenage years have figured out that we don’t get out of this life alive. What we don’t know, what we can’t possibly ever know, is precisely when and how death will find us. We could be attacked by a bear, unloaded by a horse, kicked by a cow, fall down a cliff, overturn a canoe, collide with a logging truck—and I have lost good friends to all of these. However it comes, for most of us death comes as a surprise. According to the news reports, on the day the bear got old Bill he was peacefully juicing and canning apples in his house out in the Horsefly hills. The last thing on Bill’s mind was what happened in the apple orchard when the bear showed up and he went out to defend his apples. You just never know.

Those folks whom I have been privileged to walk with through a terminal illness fully know death awaits them at the end of their journey. Their families know it just as much and just as well. Yet when death finally comes knocking it still is, at least at some level, a surprise.

We are just back from burying Linda’s mom. After a rushed 12-hour drive home to the Kootenays on early winter roads, we arrived after Flo had slipped into unconsciousness and was being nurtured only by a regular dose of morphine; after we became fully aware of what all of that meant, when Flo died two days later there was still an element of surprise in it for all of us. Even in extreme old age and terminal illnesses, it seems to me no one knows exactly the day, the hour, the minute or the way death finally arrives. You just never know.

For me this is why Easter and what it is all about is so important. Even after those first women saw Jesus risen from the grave, and those first men touched the wounds that killed him— and yet he was alive—those of us who can never know about death can know that death never gets the last word. The last word concerning death is, “He is risen.” (Matthew 28:6) Even after the ‘least of the apostles’ was blinded on the road to Damascus by the Risen Christ; even after he was personally privy to over 500 eyewitness accounts to the resurrection of Jesus, the last word on death is: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54-55)

Linda’s mom’s death surprised me at a church conference. After driving Linda to Cranbrook and being with her and her mom for an evening, I had driven another four hours to just outside of Calgary to be the keynote speaker at a rather large ecumenical conference on rural ministry. Two days into it I got the word, first by email and then by phone, that Flo had died. I really didn’t have the time to deal with the news until my part of the conference was over and I was driving through the Rocky Mountains back towards Cranbrook. It was hard to believe that my mother-in-law was dead. She was always such a vital, living presence in my life. She had played a large part in my conversion to Christ, in my becoming a Presbyterian and an ordained minister. Her dementia had been hard to believe when it began, but her actual death was even harder to believe. At some level I don’t think I thought she would ever die.

As I got out of the truck in Cranbrook after a long drive on poor winter roads over the Rockies, Linda met me with a hug, a twinkle in her eye and the words: “Well hon, Mom has got her mind back.” We both laughed. Later at the graveside when Linda’s family took individual turns at being more than fashionably late for the committal, Linda sidled up to the frustrated funeral director and chuckled, “Don’t be discouraged. Being late is a family trait.” She didn’t say it but she told me later that she certainly thought it: This is the first time Mom has been on time for anything.

Linda and her mom were close. Flo always referred to Linda as her baby, and as Linda is the youngest in the family, this was their special bond. I have been observing my wife quite carefully ever since her mom’s passing, looking for telltale signs of deep grieving. The weeks and months have not revealed the intense remorse, guilt, grief and depression that I often see in those who have lost a loved one. Sure, she sheds a tear now and again, and once in a while I catch a wistful look as she remembers, but there remains a brightness to her mourning that I think only a deep faith in the Risen Christ can instill. With death, you just never know. But with faith in the Risen Christ you can be absolutely sure: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”