I Watched a Man Die Once July 5, 2008

I watched a man die once.

It wasn’t one of those sudden instant deaths; it was the slow, suffering type. He was positioned on a mat, lying on his back underneath a mango tree. Naked—save for the thin tattered and torn sheet which barely concealed his most intimate parts—as he came into the world, he would depart. He was nothing more than skin and bones, a withering skeleton of flesh. Kaposi Sarcoma covered his arms and legs, his hands and face. This flies, like vultures circling the dead, swarmed around him in anticipation of his expiration. Each breath was arduous. His hands began to tremble. His eyes darted here and there, although I’m certain he saw nothing: his eyes were glazed over, a varnish of imminent death. He recoiled in pain, once…twice. His breathing slowed and then stopped. Oh, but wait—he’s still holding on! One more breath—in and out, deeply breathing… and then…nothing. The end had come.

Twenty-three years on this earth he had spent—just the same as I. This man died on Easter Sunday, a day when I should have been celebrating new creation and life. The day that Jesus conquered the grave; this man surrendered into its grip. When I should have been rejoicing, my heart was mourning. I was furious at the man’s family—this was not the way it should be, I wanted to scream! This man should not have died alone—no one at his side! How could his family and friends abandon him at his moment of vulnerability? Where was the dignity in his last hours? Was he stripped of his humanity because of four little letters? I was irate; I sat silently under the tree and let my anger ruminate there.

I’ve seen death before. I’ve watched a patient or two die in the hospital during my undergrad clinical rotations as a nursing student; I volunteered at a hospice organization in my last years of university; I worked at a summer camp for 4 years for children with cancer. I am no stranger to death. In fact, as morbid as it may sound, I feel drawn to it. Yet, this life lost disturbed me, terribly. I felt an inconceivable connection to the young man for no certain reason other than I resonated with the sadness I saw in his eyes. I can’t explicate exactly, but in some way, as I watched him die, I saw myself fading along with him. My beating heart and breath-filled lungs told me otherwise. I was alive, he was among the lifeless. Life was pulsating through my veins as death crept before my eyes.

I sat there and just watched as riggamortus set in. I was paralyzed to move, to breathe, to utter a sound. All I felt capable of was to sit and to stare and that I did well. This past year, my faith journey has taken me to Uganda, to live and to work with a grassroots HIV/AIDS organization through the Mennonite Central Committee’s SALT program. This year has brought about many laughs and countless tears, lessons learned and failures faced. This year has taken me for many twists and turns on the journey towards a relevant and real faith but watching this nameless man breathe his last breath has moved me most. He was the neighbor of one of my organization’s client’s. He was a man who lived and died alone, without dignity. No one was certain, but everyone was sure, that the young man died of AIDS. I was told he was a hermit, an absurdity in the relational fabric of Ugandan humanity.

I’m learning much of life is like this, walking the line. It’s a line that is ever so thin and shadowy as it separates life and death. On that Resurrection Sunday morning, that line was before me, exposed for all to see, if of course, they were willing to look. I looked and I saw; and now, I am living in the space between. As I walk through the crowded streets of Kamuli and rub shoulders with those I pass, I feel the sting of death everywhere. HIV/AIDS is everywhere; poverty, too. My faith journey has brought me here, to this point—to this place—to live among the walking dead.

This space between that I now occupy is the distance between the ecstasy of joy and melancholy of sorrow, the expanse separating pleasure and pain, and the void amid suffering and celebration. This is life in the in-between; life lived in the midst of death. Life and death—so contradictory to our human comfort yet naturally so unquestionably intertwined. In the absence of life and the presence of death, I have discovered the presence of intense emotions—the sorrow and sadness that intersects with flickers of joy and love. And it’s right here where I’ve found what I’ve been looking for all along. I don’t fully understand it, but it somehow all makes sense.

This path of death has led me further on a journey towards the life and love that can only be found in Jesus. Physical death is apparent everywhere while spiritual death is that much more subtle yet similarly as ubiquitous. As a nurse, much of my job is to treat the physical, but as a follower of Christ, it is my concern to nurture the spiritual as well. I look around me, both here in Uganda and as I look ahead to the streets of Harrisburg, I see the sting of death everywhere—lifeless men and women sitting, walking, talking. People near and far are in need of life and desperate for an inner peace. I’ve found this in Jesus and more than ever, I want to share it with others so that they, too, may find rest for their weary souls.

I am far from a street corner preacher; I’ll admit I often shrink back when I encounter such. I suppose you can consider me an evangelist of the relational kind through the embodiment of the practical ways of Jesus’ radical love.

My mantra has become my life—it’s all about living and dying in love. I watched a man die once. And it changed my life forever.