Ken Campbell died on Friday. One of the last reflections I had with him during one of my last visits when he was lucid, was about a walk I took on the beach. There was another visit in which I sang some hymns and prayed over him, and anointed him. On that last visit – all he could say was “sure” when I asked him if I could sing a few hymns for him. And so I did. But during the one before that, we had a good conversation.
Now that Ken is gone, I’d like to share it with you too.
I had come back from the east coast. I had spent time walking on the sands of Myrtle Beach. On that walk – I was thinking about Ken. Thinking about his request, “Teach me how to die.” I was also reflecting on another parishioner who had just passed away. Eldo. The guy always wore a Navy cap at our Men’s fellowship. He treasured that cap. He treasured the brotherhood that the cap represented. It seemed very fitting that if I couldn’t be there with him and his family, I would be by the sea.
On my walk on the beach, it struck me that most of our lives are spent walking on shifting sands. Represented by the loose sand high on the beach to my left. Those that are far away from the ocean. But then there is this zone – which is much closer to the ocean waves; The recent action of the water has turned that area into solid – almost concrete-like smoothness. And generally speaking, that’s where people prefer to walk. The footing is much firmer there. It’s also where fresh discoveries are made of shells washed up on the shore.
Shells in themselves are worth reflecting on. They are the remains of what was once alive but now are dead. Each shell is a unique legacy. Each one is different. Each one speaks to the uniqueness of the creature who constructed it. And it has to be said that some are more beautiful than others. Some are worth picking up and taking home. Others, not so much.
Isn’t that the way it is with our lives? We all leave a legacy. We can’t help but leave something behind. Some seem worth holding onto by the living .. treasuring … valuing. But, if we’re being honest, I’ve had funerals, too, where it is just awkward. Because there isn’t a lot to say about them. They were unique – for sure. They lived their life the way they wanted to. But now that they’re gone. The rest of us who are, as yet, still living can walk on and barely give their particular life a second thought.
Speaking of walking – back to the topic of the beach. Can we use the ocean’s depths as a metaphor for death? Don’t waves make a great metaphor for death? Always present – incessantly claiming – then receding for a time, but always returning. They have been there since the very beginning of the world.
And the loose powdery sand high on the beach. Can that serve as a metaphor for the part of our lives lived when we think we are far away from death? There, the sands are ever-shifting. The walking is less grounded. In some sense, it is more difficult and takes a lot more work. Made so by wondering what path to take. The possibilities and directions we may take are seemingly endless, including the possibility of leaving the beach altogether. Placing ourselves far from the eternal crashing of the waves. For the moment anyway.
Having served as a pastor for many years, it seems to me that there is a wonderful sense of clarity and firm-footedness that one gets when one walks close to those waves. For those who are fortunate enough to understand that the waves are close, usually, that clarity is made so by some diagnosis but it needn’t be. One can—at any stage in life—take a reflective walk near the waves. And when you do…there is a certain clarity – a firm-footedness that living life can take on. At those points, no longer is one planning a trip to, say, South Dakota that one **could** take. With all the questions that go with it about which hotel to stay at and which sight/site to see, where to eat? Instead, life narrows to that thin band of sand between what was once the life we considered normal… and the incessant crashing of the waves that remind us of our mortality and the eventuality that we will be claimed. But not…just…yet!
In those moments – if we are given the grace to live in them – we walk. It’s a great place to remember those who have gone before and reflect on the community we will soon join, to be at peace in a way that is hard to explain. Over the years, I have sat by the bedside of those who will soon die like Ken. The word I would use to describe that place isn’t negative. Far from it. It takes on the character of being a holy place. As holy as the experience, I have in walking between the surf and the dry, powdery sand far away from the shore. It is, most of all, a place to reflect on our unique part in the cosmic expanse of time and a place to appreciate what a gift it is to have the ability to experience it.
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