What's Hard About Dying

I'm sitting here, taking some time to pray and reflect while my sister is fighting several medical issues. Everything in this post is something I would normally share with her during one of our talks. I decided to share my thoughts here.

What's hard about dying is being the one left to live without a loved one.

It's hard to accept that the person will be gone, that you won't wake up with them here.

What's hard is not being selfish; being able to let them know that it's okay to let go. Hard not to make all the bargains with God that you have no right to make.

It's hard to suddenly come face to face with the idea that we all are born to, eventually, die. Life is temporary. We know that and we hear it in whispers every time we hear about the death of someone else's loved one, but we hear it as a roar of grief when it's us that's saying goodbye.

No matter how hard life is, death is harder. Life in hard for the individual, sometimes by their own choices. Death is hard on all the ones who love you, need you, and think they cannot go on without you.

What's hardest about death is that it's so easy.

I am loosely repeating something I once heard: "Everybody wants to meet Jesus, but nobody wants to die."