In Contemplation of My Death
I’m 72, same age when my father found out he had pancreatic cancer. Up until then I never heard of it or how deadly it was. Months later he passed. That was twenty years ago.
It was a grueling slow death. I began to get the same stomach pains he described. I was convinced I had pancreatic cancer. Sympathy pains? I had every test imaginable and still wouldn’t believe the negative results.
After his passing I went up to my cabin near Yosemite, my happy place. I had been standing outside under the pine trees in deep thought. I truly believed I was dying soon. I guess some could say I was praying. I was asking someone or something if I could please hang around a little longer to see my grandkids graduate college. See where their lives were going to lead them.
Suddenly the world around me went deathly quiet. I could feel the coarseness of the earth come right up through my shoes. The warmth of the sun on the soil. I became hypersensitive. A gentle breeze brushed my face. I closed my eyes. I could feel every pore of my skin being touched ever so softly. My hair lightly moving about. My body tingled, I felt as though I were weightless.
I succumbed to this overwhelming peace. It was something I had never experienced before or after. I had no idea what was going on. I had no pain. No fear. No worries. I gave in completely to the moment. And then suddenly the world around came alive again. The noises of the neighborhood filled my ears. I could hear the birds sing, cars driving by.
I desperately tried to recapture that moment, but it was not to be.
I’m Not Going to Die… Yet
Eventually after numerous tests my last doctor looked at me and firmly said, “You don’t have it. Go home. Enjoy life.”
It was my Turning Point. I no longer fear death. Not in the slightest. It’s not a faith thing, or a God thing. I’ve merely accepted it. What I fear is life. I’m afraid I won’t make the most of whatever time I have left. Too many are robbed of their lives before they get that chance.
Why am I writing this?
My life is important to me. It’s important to my wife, my daughters, my grandkids, my siblings, my mother and hopefully some friends. Though I am but one person, one lonely individual, I matter. My impact on others may be minimal but it’s my impact. No matter who we are or what stature we are in life, we are all important to ourselves and to all those with whom we come in contact.
Life is the ultimate of all gifts. It’s the only gift that matters. And all of us matter.
How is it possible then that so many people have no regard for the sanctity of life?
Murders, shootings, knife stabbings, poisonings have been going on since man came to be. Only we are now in the year 2025 and civilized behavior isn’t improving.
Many a man or woman have died over politics. The reasons may vary. When Charlie Kirk was murdered, the impact it had was different. A lot of people didn’t even know who he was before that. He too was but one life, one man. Would the impact of his death have been equally as traumatic had he died in a car crash or had succumbed to some disease? I don’t think so. It would have been sad but then millions of people die for all sorts of reasons every day.
We would mourn and move on.
It was the brutality and the reason he was killed that made the difference.
Turned On By the Idea of God
It also opened a massive sliding door into the depraved minds of other human beings. Exposing how much hate and a complete lack of a soul way too many people have. How anyone can rejoice over the death of a father, a husband, a fellow human being, purely for sharing his thoughts and views on life.
Those individuals, like the shooter, are blinded by their anger, their brainwashing. They fail to recognize, like Charlie, that despite their despicable behavior, their lives are equally as important, despite how they think.
I hadn’t followed Charlie that closely. The biggest thing I learned after his death was how he incorporated his love of God and religion in his life and shared it openly with everyone.
In a country where people of faith, any faith, are chastised, it was remarkable to learn how thousands of young people were not turned off by God but turned on.
I don’t consider myself a religious man. And I can’t say whether my experience at the cabin was some sort of spiritual awareness. But the impact and unifying belief people have in a God, is more powerful than can be measured.
The Power of Belief
The “Turning Point” for me was when Charlie’s wife spoke. If you didn’t feel something wonderfully powerful, you are in serious need of help. And many of you are. However you feel about a God and religion, Erika Kirk put on display the power that belief gave her. She did not condemn, she did not speak of vengeance, she did not judge. She invoked love.
I don’t think there are many people who could have had her husband, father of her two young children – that Charlie will never see graduate from college – ripped from them, and then be able to share her heart and soul with the world in such a commanding way.
There is a huge lesson to be learned from all this.
One man, a young man, coalesced a nation and a world with words of faith and common sense. He never attacked anyone. Because many didn’t share his point of view, his words filtered into their brains as something entirely different because it wasn’t what they wanted to hear.
A very similar thing happened about 2,000 years ago. And the world still remembers. I think Charlie Kirk and what he stood for will also be remembered thousands of years from now.
Peace out.
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You put together, Henry, one of the most excellent articles The Current has put out. It is really hard to get one's mind around some of the incredibly hateful and nasty comments that have come out in praise of the Kirk murder and how many supposedly "intelligent" people have made light of it. Like you, I was not overly familiar with Mr. Kirk's life before his death but after listening to clips of his speeches, I have to shake my head as to why the hatred of him by some people was so intense. Thank you for your article. I am sure a lot of people will relate to it.
God is calling every human to Himself. Sometimes it is the whisper of rustling wind in the trees as we contemplate our mortality. Other times it is the roar of witnessing the cosmic clash of good and evil. Whether we are experiencing the whisper or the roar in the events of the last week, the origin of those feelings is the same. God created humans with an inherent knowledge that He exists, and wants us to know and worship Him. The realization of this fundamental fact of life is the beginning of wisdom. That was Charlie Kirk’s primary message to us all. He will be sadly missed, but what Satan means for his evil agenda, God can use for good. Stay tuned and keep looking up.