That final borderland we will all explore

A year ago, my father was hours from passing. That his time had come was not surprising. He had been defying death for years, but now he was in unstoppable heart failure. He’d led a long life. He was 93.

Yet his mind was still active, way too active. “Shut off the computer, Dad,” my sister ordered him. He was still planning his own funeral service. That mind of his had been on hyper mode since long before I met him when he was just shy of 24.

Finally, he began to let go. As I watched across the continent via zoom, he lingered into the wee hours of the morning.

I was hardly a dispassionate observer. And yet, as I have felt on similar occasion, I realized I was looking through a glass darkly into a portal one cannot cross and ever return. It is a rare privilege to get this close without passing through.

As a boy, I heard stories of deathbed watches of elderly loved ones. In those days, relatives and friends gathered round to watch and pray as the dying beloved slipped away. Stories of saints going off to glory amidst the singing of hymns by those left behind remain deep in my psyche.

There is something sacred about that hour when one passes over the threshold. For trusting believers, it is a moment of hope. For others, it can be a moment of hopeless struggle. Still others anticipate it being a letting go of what is for who knows what – nothingness perhaps (?), seeing ourselves, perhaps, as nothing more than dust or ashes.

I respect that sacred hour, regardless the outlook. Human life, in all its stages and in all its triumphs and tragedies, is to be respected above all other earthbound realities.

I am fascinated by that threshold and what it means for us who have not yet crossed it. Among several books I may never write is one I call The Seven Stages of My Life. Stage 7 is life eternal for which believers like me have such great hope. Stage 6 is that transition phase of passing from life to death that all of us must go through.

For the theologically-precise among us, if we wind up not dying, but instead get caught up to meet our Maker in the air, we will still pass through a transition from mortality to immortality. To quote the Apostle Paul, “We will all be changed.”¹

For some, that passing from life to death is instant. Which generally means tragic. A car accident. A murder, perhaps. But for most of us, that passing is a process, sometimes a very long process. What do they call Alzheimer’s? The long goodbye? We pass from awareness to oblivion gradually as our minds and bodies shut down.

Or do we? Pass into oblivion, that is? My faith says not. And so, the transition itself is not the end, but merely a corridor – a passageway into a new chapter, a chapter that will last for eternity. Far from oblivion as our end, God has created us to last. Maybe not these mortal bodies as they now are, but certainly us as embodied beings. If not this mortal body, then as Paul says we are to be clothed in immortality.

Lest I lose you in my philosophical wanderings, let me return to the death watch, to put an indelicate spin on it. Out of deference to my father’s mortal dignity, I won’t talk about what I observed of his experience specifically, but about what I’ve noted through observing a number of passings. Though few in number, they remain etched in my memory.

Is it a purely passive letting go, reluctant as it may be? Or is it being drawn through, much like the birthing canal? “Being drawn through” is passive sounding, but as with childbirth, there is nothing passive about it. We may not have an option, but we cooperatively give in, we let go, so that we can be drawn into what comes next.

I sit by the bedside and watch. My loved one has concerns about getting something done. About taking care of this. About telling someone that. But these concerns gradually fade, the energy needed for the task at hand.

And what is that task? At one level, it is just living – breathing, for example. At another, it is the task of letting go. “Shutting down” we sometimes call it. As if we were leaving a dying spaceship and needed to make sure all the switches were off even though there is no more power onboard.

The person’s proactive responses give way to reactions. She struggles to breathe. He forces himself to respond with words for which there is no breath available, no spare thinking processes with which to form words.

Signs of life flicker. The attendant keeps checking for pulse. We sit and wait. As long as there is pulse, we wait, occasionally dozing off after long hours of exhausting vigil, trying to revive ourselves so as not to miss the moment.

The loved one remains, so we understand, as long as there is pulse. We picture the life force in the breath. The breathing that becomes shallow, then imperceptible. But we also understand the life force is in the blood and with that we can observe the pulse. It too becomes slowed, faint, nonexistent to the casual observer. Yet the attendant says the pulse is still there. Their life force is still with us.

So where is our loved one at that moment? Are they here? Well, yes, as long as there is breath, as long as there is pulse. Then what?

Science is pushing back the veil, enough for us to know of other signs of life. Such as brain waves, for example. How long can the mind function without oxygen, transported from our breathing via the blood to the brain? No breathing, no oxygen. No pulse, no oxygen. No oxygen, no brain function.

Brain hypoxia, they call it. Hypoxia causes the neural cells (brain cells) to die through a process called apoptosis. Brain cells dying is something that can happen throughout a person’s lifetime. Too much of it, while the body is otherwise functioning, and we have brain damage or dementia.

Complete loss of oxygen leads to massive die-off. Following cardiac arrest, when the heart stops beating, there is pulse no more, the brain is deprived of oxygen and in less than a minute becomes electrically inactive. Whatever else they might still be able to do, the neurons can no longer communicate with each other.

The body can still function without the brain functioning. In certain cases, medical teams can provide artificial support via a ventilator to keep the blood flowing and oxygenation going so as to allow for organ donation.

The brain itself can keep going for up to 5 minutes after the heart stops beating, so I am told. But then an event called “terminal spreading depolarization” occurs; scientists nickname it a brain tsunami. When the brain stops functioning, it is only 5 minutes more before irreversible brain damage occurs. It takes a bit longer for the entire body to shut down.

I am not thinking of any of this as the attendant tells me there is no longer a detectible pulse. We who are present simply say our loved one is gone.

But gone where? Did they just slip out the door while we were otherwise distracted?

There is much confusion among the living about death. This much is clear. We don’t become angels, at least not if the Bible is our guide. We don’t cease to exist either.

From a theological perspective, we humans are a whole – body, mind, spirit, soul, all these things interconnected. We are not, as the Greeks taught, distinctly body, soul, and spirit, as if our parts were separable.

I remember making the mistake in grad school of blurting out that “man has a soul” to which Dr. McGee, my professor, thundered – as much as he was capable of thundering – that “man is a soul!” Nor are we humans destined for a bodiless eternity, floating in space. I cannot tell you what our immortal bodies will be like; I can only tell you that in eternity we are complete. All else is speculation.

But my interest in the moment is not with what will be, but what is happening now in this hour of transition. I yearn to comprehend!

Near death experiences try to teach us what that transition is like. But I find them too generic or too subjective to be of help. Dark tunnels, bright lights, seeing loved ones, all these may be true, but I find them difficult to verify. When looking through the glass darkly, we walk by faith.

What my faith does tell me is that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.² At least for those who believe in and trust in the Lord. We are also told that, after we die, judgement comes. As the King James puts it, God will judge the quick and the dead.³

But again, that is after death. What happens at this moment? I am so curious.

My loved one slips away. Their body lies cold. They entered that transition portal what seems like hours ago but may have only been minutes. Who measures time at such an occasion?

If I watch close enough, if I look hard enough, maybe I will be able to see my loved one pass through that portal to the other side. But, alas, I cannot. For I remain among the living.

I can barely take it all in. They no longer are with us. Some may think the loved one is hovering nearby or that they can still hear us. I think not. Why hover when eternity awaits? How does one hear without brain function?

Out of respect or hope I want to keep talking as if they remain. But I know they do not.

I am not at a loss, grieving and pained as I may be. Or should I say my loss is not hopeless? For even more than my hope in the resurrection is the hope I have in Christ Jesus.

I sit back sensing I almost caught a glimpse of that portal. But not really. What I saw, what I experienced was a borderland, that space between life and life hereafter. It is a traumatizing space for those who suffer the lose of someone prematurely. Even if the loved one lived a good and long life, the parting is aching.

Finality. They are now beyond reach. I may speak of them as being near. But they aren’t really. I can’t go to them, and they can’t come to me.

But as Jesus said, we have Another who is with us. Jesus told his followers he was leaving them, but they would not be alone because he would send them Someone he called the Comforter. Theologians call that Someone the Holy Spirit, as in the Spirit of God. Life may be temporal and eternity may be foreign, but in the borderland between the now and the future is the presence of the Holy Spirit who reminds us of the promises of God.

As I watch my loved one fade away, not wondering where they are going, more curious about how they are getting there, I am reminded that I have journeyed through a borderland today, a borderland between the living and the dead, the now and that which is to come. I am reminded that, as valuable as this life may be, the things of this world are fleeting. What is pales in comparison with what is to come.

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Public domain photo by Porfino Domingues.

1. 1 Corinthians 15:51 ↩︎
2. 2 Corinthians 5:8 ↩︎
3. 2 Timothy 4:1 ↩︎