“You’ll be gone by spring,” said the same voice that drove me to retire. I was afraid this might be true, that I’d be dead by the time the weather warmed. Recent estate planning put death on my mind. I’ve heard enough about the frailty of old age, that it’d be all right by me to leave here with my faculties intact.
You’ll be gone by spring. I couldn’t tell Bruce. Then came the snotty nose, my appetite gone, and sleep rising. While my pneumonia wasn’t COVID-19, I needed breathing treatments four times a day. Good doctors cared. I tell you there is healing beyond the science, in their touch, their listening.
Then a dear friend said he might not survive this pandemic. An author wrote she was sick with COVID-19. You’ll be gone by spring. Was it Jesus’ voice or the voice, clanging like a train banging from one track to another, the cars jostling against their couplings, the voice of my life, maybe all our lives, rolling onto a siding while the pandemic roared by?
Here on Good Friday we remember how we killed God. What can be more wicked? And yet his last words were “Father Forgive them.” As C.S. Lewis writes, “When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.” Death is wrecked for good. And if it’s wrecked, why be afraid when our time comes?
I'mKatie Andraski and that’s my perspective.
