The following is a guest post by my friend (and frequent reader of this blog) LRA…

When Matthew invited me to write a guest post for Jesus Needs New PR, I knew what I wanted to write about: my Grandmother’s death. Since then, and in light of recent posts about Matthew’s friend, Sara, I decided to write about death a bit more broadly and my response to it as a non-believer.

Last March, my friend of 13 years, Julie, shot herself in the chest and died. She reached out to me by text the night before she died. I texted her back the next morning, but it was too late. I had a sick feeling when I finally got in touch with her husband, and when he told me, I felt so horrible for not texting her back right away. I felt like I had failed her.

In June, my grandmother was feeling badly and took a trip to the ER. She’d had a bad reaction to a new medication, but she was ok. I called her to check on her, and she said she was fine. I encouraged her (like always) to keep me updated on her medical issues because I wanted to make sure that if she ever needed it, I could tell a doctor what I knew. I also told her how much I loved her and how special she was to me. That was the last time we spoke. About a week and a half later, she had a stroke. She didn’t die right away. In fact, she lived for about two more weeks. But she never regained consciousness.

My precious grandmother was a mother to me. I even lived with her for a while as a child. While she was in the hospital, I sat with her and played Frank Sinatra songs from my computer. I kept her hair brushed because she was always so particular about her hair style, having gone to the same beauty shop every week for more than 50 years. Eventually, though, her brain was so swollen that it began to crush her brain stem and affect her lower functions. She was moved into hospice and died the following day.

These two deaths are the first ones I experienced as a non-believer. How does a person who rejects the supernatural deal with these kinds of life experiences? I no longer have a belief in the after-life, and the consequences of that were made painfully real for me this year. I’m never going to see Julie again. I’m never, ever going to see my beloved grandmother again. Oh, how I wish there was a God!

Yes, this non-believer wishes there were a loving God and a real heaven to go to. I’d love to see my loved-ones again. Tell them that I love them. I long for that. I do. I’m not going to lie.

But I also know such beliefs are a matter of faith, something I lack. Such beliefs are—dare I say?—no longer reasonable to me. So, I have had to figure out another way to find comfort in mourning. I’ve had to think of other means of keeping my loved-ones close to my heart. I have had to re-configure my own meaning and face my own non-existence after death. And here is what I came up with: Mark Twain and Hamlet.

Those of you who know me may have heard this before, but I subscribe to the Mark Twain/ Hamlet theory of death and meaning.

It was Mark Twain who quipped, “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

Of course, this may comfort me somewhat about my own death, but it doesn’t really comfort me about the deaths of others. How does one deal with the sudden non-existence of a loved one? As a non-believer, I have to accept not just that my Grandmother and Julie have passed away, but that they no longer exist. These people who had importance in my life, and in the case of my Grandmother profound importance, no longer exist. They don’t exist anymore.

Here is where I turn to Hamlet. Sure, he is famous for his proto-existentialist speech “To be or not to be,” but it is his speech about his impending death that I find important in this matter:

(Hamlet, to Horatio)

As thou’rt a man,
Give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I’ll have’t.
O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.

Hamlet knows that he is dying, and so he asks Horatio to tell his story. Some people who believe that they have ultimate meaning and eternal purpose may say, “Pffffftttt!” But I don’t. I take this seriously. Plato died 2,500 years ago, but we still read his thoughts in his dialogues. The uniqueness of his personality and his brilliance are still very much available to us. And although most of us are no Plato, we are unique and important to the people in our lives. For this reason, storytelling is of utmost importance. The story of our lives is of utmost importance.

If you will indulge me a little more, I want to tell you a few stories. In indulging me, you grant me a memorial to two women whom I loved and you let me tell you stories about myself as well.

Here goes.

While I was in New York City at graduate school, Julie and her husband Marc lived in my house. Whenever I was in Texas, I’d visit them. (It was a little weird visiting my own house, but… anyhow…) One afternoon on a bright Texas day, Julie and I were sitting on the couch together. We both suffer from migraines, and so the brightness of the room was affecting our eyes. Julie had put a magazine on top of her head to create a visor. I had folded a piece of paper in half and done the same. Marc walked into the living room and saw us sitting there together like that. A bemused look came over his face and he proclaimed, “You guys are two peas in a pod!”

Indeed.

Later, Julie came to visit me in New York. She’d never been there before and was checking out medical schools in the area. It was Christmastime and New York was lit up with lights and Christmas cheer. We had gone shopping on 5th Avenue and were taking the subway home. Our train stopped in the tunnel. A jumper. We had to file off the train through the first car. As we exited the train, Julie looked down and saw a part of the body and she immediately paled and started to shake. I pulled her by the hand out of the station. In the corridor, I put my hands on her face and I told her over and over “It’s ok. It’s ok.” until she calmed down. The strongest memory I have from that day is the whiteness of her face against her red hair. It was strangely beautiful. Julie was so beautiful.

My grandmother used to tell me when I was little, “You are not being very social right now. Why don’t you go rest for a few minutes in your room, and when you are ready to be social again, you can come out.” Yes, even then I was feisty and sometimes combative. Temperament is inborn. It was her gentle way of diffusing me. It worked. That was how my grandmother was. She knew how to handle me. She knew me better than I knew myself sometimes. She was always looking out for me. She mothered me. The house that Marc and Julie lived in, that I lived in and am now living in was a gift from my grandmother. My grandmother’s aunt died and left it to her, so Grandmother gave it to me. When my grandmother’s will was revealed to me, Grandmother left me furniture that she had inherited from Aunt T. She left me bedroom and dining room furniture that she had had restored. She wanted the furniture to be in Aunt T’s house again. She wanted me to have it, again. Yes, I said again. You see, when I was in college, my grandmother loaned me the furniture to put into my college apartment. I was pretty broke as a college student. I was putting myself through school, but I had beautiful antique furniture in my apartment. People used to come over and remark, “This looks nothing like a college student’s apartment!” It was a point of pride for me. My grandmother was looking out for me.

While I was living in New York City, I came home for the Christmas holidays to see my grandmother. We’d had a family gathering on Christmas Eve with aunts and uncles and cousins. On the drive home, my grandmother told me, “My leg hurts!” I asked her, “Do you have a Charlie horse?” “No. This is much worse! It hurts!” When we got home, I got her shoes off and saw that one foot was yellowish and cold. I told her that her circulation was compromised and that I thought she had a blood clot in her leg. I told her that we had to go to the ER. I drove her there. Sure enough, she had a blood clot and had to have emergency surgery the next day. The look on her face when she told people that I saved her foot was priceless. Of course, she also added that she thought I saved her life, too.

While my grandmother is gone and my friend, Julie, is gone, their stories continue to live. Parts of who they were exist in me. Their stories continue to shape who I am, and who I am becoming.

A regular reader here, Leanne, once asked if she could tell me her story. I was new to JNNPR, and so I refused. I regret that and I would like to correct that error now. So Leanne, if you have read this post and heard my story, please tell me yours and give me a chance to atone by reading it. I send forth this invitation to all of the folks here at JNNPR. Please tell me your story so that I may know you better and a little part of you can live in me.

Why have I offered such a thing? Because I think that believer or no, we can all benefit from knowing each others’ stories. However you derive your meaning, such knowledge is significant and matters. It is an olive branch that I can offer to people who are sometimes so very, very different from me. Sure I can be feisty, pointed, and even ruthless in a debate. But I have another side. I have a side that cares deeply about people– even more than I care about ideas. It just takes me a little while to show that side, sometimes.

Since I have been a regular here, I have developed a genuine friendship with Matthew. I dare say that I love him because he has shown grace and kindness to me even in our disagreements. I hope to emulate a little of Matthew’s grace here today. I hope we can all do that as we come together in the comments to share our stories. Today is a day of peace, a day of love, and a day of kindness. Thank you for sharing it with me.

Death Without God: A non-believer’s journey through loss (a guest post by LRA) is a post from: Jesus Needs New PR