The day did not begin well. While reaching for a dish in the cabinet I knocked down a large pot which fell forcefully on my ring finger, pressing it on to the blade of my smoothie maker, leaving me in pain with a large and bloody gash. Then I discovered that we are out of toilet paper. Then I found out I had gained a pound right before Weight Watchers weigh in. All of which made me late for a dentist appointment. Little, really minuscule meaningless annoyances that left me stressed as the day was beginning. But I was alive and she wasn’t.
The fact is that no amount of small things can distract my heart from the fact that my dear friend and former parishioner, Dr. Ching Ling Kung has died. She who made me part of her family. She who was like another sister to me. She of shared confidences, had a massive stroke that did so much brain damage that she never regained consciousness. At first she was on a ventilator. And after that was removed, she lived for three days as family and friends kept vigil, her children at her side around the clock until she breathed her last breath.
On Thursday, May 11, after cremation, she was laid to rest where her husband for many years, and father of their children, John, Lee is buried. Her children with the help of her current minister, Allen Fairfax, with me as his side-kick, will celebrate her life in a memorial service this Saturday.
I was not ready for Ching Ling to die. She was in church on Easter Sunday and seeing her was a joy and such a given of life. Somehow, I expected her to always be there. She with the healing hands and loving heart for so many of us. Trained as a doctor in China, she practiced and taught acupuncture in Boston and was an herbalist. She studied Chinese philosophy that was far over my head. I knew her as a mother who loved her children and grandchildren fiercely, her friends with an unwavering loyalty and worried about all of us. Her daughter says she is in a better place, and I agree with her, knowing as a person of faith I should, but that truth will have to grow in me. Right now I am coping with the loss of her. Later I will celebrate her old and new life.
As a Minister, I have officiated at many funerals. And as a family member attended still others including that of my younger brother. What I am discovering is that Ching Ling’s death seems to stir thoughts about my own death as non of the others did. Maybe for all of us, the death of a friend is often the death of a peer and that seems very close. So as I pray for and encourage her friends and especially her children, to live into the future as she would want them to, I think of my own family.
I want to live as long as I am given to live. Even bad days are a gift of life. And I want my family to live fully into their lives when I am gone. As another doctor friend says, we always have to leave in the middle of the play. While we are here, life is precious. I think my worrying about those I love is just an expression of how much I love and treasure them.
Ching Ling has journeyed home into that Mystery we can only see dimly where love beyond our imagining abides.
Until that time comes for any of us, we have work to do and lives to live, and love to give. Let us hold fast to our precious days in time and space, in finitude, for it is here that we hone our spirits and walk firmly in the footsteps of all who have gone before, paving the way for all who will come after. Embracing this life as the beginning of eternity.