Where did we ever come up with the romantic notion that the best way to die is in our sleep? First things first, when it comes to dying, there really isn’t a “good” way to go. Why? Because you’re dead! Dying in your sleep I believe comes with a lot of potential pitfalls.
The first being if you die in your sleep, when do you first realize your dead? At least in a car accident you can see it coming! You scream throw up your hands, have your life pass before your eyes, and enter into the death place knowing how you got there. Dying in your sleep your never sure if you died and are in heaven OR you are dreaming and just when your excited about the prospect of seeing God, surprise. It was all a dream.
The other problem with dying in your sleep is the inconvenience it puts on everyone else, especially if that “everyone else” was sleeping next to you. Nothing starts the day off on the wrong foot like waking next to someone who is dead. Dead people are a pain in the butt. They expect you to do everything for them. They assume you are going to treat them tenderly and dignified yet they do nothing to assist us. When you’re dead someone else has to dress you, which is really a challenge because you can’t help push your arm through the jacket.
We dress dead people in clothes so perhaps we should wear clothes to bed and then at least when you croak your ready to roll. Not to mention I find it difficult deciding which tie matches the suit we are going to bury you in. We dress people up to throw them in a hole and toss dirt on top! Why? Why aren’t we buried in the same outfit we came in on? Talk about a waste of perfectly good suit or dress. I say we are buried “au natural”.
Some people leave gifts and memorials at the gravesite of a dearly departed. Maybe a teddy bear or a bottle of Jack Daniels depending on the type of person they were in life. These gestures by the way are touching only to those of us that can appreciate them, in other words the “still here” folks.
Notice too that these bottles and necklaces and teddy bears and handkerchiefs and what not always mysteriously vanish from the gravesite. In other words someone is leaving this tribute of love and someone else is stealing it and using it on the living. Seems a little creepy giving a stuffed animal to a living child that you had ripped off from a dead child’s gravesite.
Again the ultimate truth is that all the pomp and circumstances we go through for the dead is actually for the living. The dead person is long gone and aware only of where their eternal destiny is established. If they died in sins their arrival is bleak to say the least. If they committed their soul to Christ then they actually get to meet him and enter into eternal rest. That’s why if they got there by falling off a cliff, it’s actually comforting. They are sure they aren’t dreaming and realize they are more awake now then they have ever experienced before. You on the other hand can keep your teddy bear.