Death Isn't A Victory

Death is never easy, and it is almost always weird.

Growing up as a Christian or raised by Christians, my relationship with death always felt strange. It seemed like before you ever knew what death was, you were learning about a person who died and then came back to life, and then somewhat just disappeared.

It was neither happy nor sad, at first. Then the lesson was, it was sad but also happy, and necessary.

Christianity often talked about death as a result but it almost never resulted in a real discussion.

Noah was a story about how someone built a boat and saved his family and animals. Never about the people murdered by God creating a flood.

Daniel was a story about how faith could save you from a lion but never about the death of innocent women and children because of the action of two other men who tricked Daniel.

We of course learn about Jesus and how he was put to death because he claimed to be the son of God, which is a very simplistic explanation of what actually happened. We learn that his death saves us, and after his terrible fate he ascends to heaven and all is well. We learn that we have to believe him or we won’t get to go to heaven but often we leave out the part that our death must occur before we get to go there.

It is a weird way to set up our relationship with death. It makes it seem mystical, which I suppose it rather is, but it also makes it seem easy to deal with and understand.

I say all of this not because it connects directly to the rest of this story but because I think the idea of death as a child, especially in relation to Jesus, sets us up for failure when dealing with death in our lives. I don’t even think this is truly just a Christian thing. Due to Christianity having such a strong cultural influence on our lives as Americans. I think this way of thinking about death occurs in the secular world as well. Many non-religious people use the same type of language around death as the religious. Tropes such as “everything happens for a reason” or “they’re now looking after us from above” or “they’re now up in there watching a football game (insert another activity) with dad (insert family member/friend) like the old days” find their way into all walks of life.

Every year leading up to Easter, you can walk into a Christian church and will see somber imagery and darkness. However, on Sunday, the lights seem to be set on a higher setting than humanly possible and bright colors and decorations fill the room. Another thing that happens that day is constant talk about victory. You may even see flags that declare victory.

There is talk about Jesus’ victory over death and readings about it, maybe even from 1 Corinthians 15. We celebrate the “win” over sin and everyone leaves church dressed as if they belong on the 18th green at Augusta National Golf Course.

This reaction to Jesus’s death often seems to be a parallel to how we deal with the death of the people we know in real life. There is somberness when it happens or in the lead-up to their death. We briefly set our focus on that before quickly talking about how they are “in a better place” or “gained their angel wings”.

However, the thing is, death sure doesn’t feel like a victory and I am not sure acting like this actually helps us. There are instances where it may feel like it. Seeing someone ravished by disease pass away can make his or her passing seem like a win; but where is the victory in the disease?

It often feels like this reaction is for us and not them. It’s like when you go to a one-year-old’s birthday party and halfway through your second helping of pasta salad you realize that this party isn’t for the kid, it's for parents, the family, and friends. You then instantly forget this feeling when you leave until you attend your next one. Who doesn’t like free food?

I understand why we react this way but is it helpful?

I don’t remember having a bad relationship with my dad growing up. I can’t recall any truly bad memories as a child. My dad never liked nonsense; in the typical way that dads seem to detest nonsense. Loud noises or commotion seemed to bother him, even when it was my brothers and I happily playing. He always seemed upset about the costs of things in the way that the cost of something bothers every dad. Nothing extremely out of the ordinary stood out from my childhood.

My parents got divorced after I graduated from college. Their divorce, while not tragic, still caused havoc on family dynamics.

I had already started seeing what I thought was a change in my father. He seemed more annoyed about rules or felt that he was always being slighted at work and in life. The world was, in a way, out to get him, or so he felt. Sometimes that trickled down to us. He seemed to get more upset and upset easier. He always thought he was in the right, this fact may not have been new but it seemed he was more unwilling to be wrong than before.

For a while, my parents were still living together yet remained separated. This went on longer than it should have. Though “should have” seems relative, as I don’t suggest trying this scenario, though I admit, I am not a trained professional in relationships. By this time I had moved back home after a year of graduate school in Louisiana. Two of my siblings were also still at home, which made this situation even more difficult.

I moved out shortly after getting a job, which helped but the strain of my parents' dissolving relationship trickled down to our own relationships with each parent.

After the divorce was final and I had moved on, my dad seemed more focused on trying to be the winner of the divorce. Let me be frank, there is not a “winner” when it comes to divorce. I am not saying there are losers or even that divorce is bad in totality, but it definitely leaves its mark. As does trying to fend off a divorce. Divorce just is. Some families and people deal with it better than others do. My dad seemed to feel like he needed to prove to us that he wasn’t in the wrong and that it was our mom’s fault. His plan didn’t work out.

All of us could see he was just as much at fault as he envisioned my mom being. He would try to meet with us and always had documents on hand, I assume from their court hearings. They would just sit next to him, you could see him trying to find a way to bring them up casually in the conversation. I personally tried to tell him I had no interest. This was between him and his now ex-wife.

The court proceedings lasted far too long. A lot of times because hearings would be postponed due to my dad firing a lawyer or having them quit. My dad didn’t react well to not getting his way. He blamed everyone for the outcomes, unable to see his role. This sent him down further spirals. He tried to run for congress. He tried to sue his employers. He tried to sell sketchy medical equipment on the side. He kept getting more and more disillusioned with the world he was living in.

There was one afternoon in 2014; we met for a drink and to watch a World Cup match at a bar. I believe it was Bosnia & Herzegovina playing against someone. Anyway, out of nowhere, he says, “That could have been you up there”. I remember freezing for a moment before just saying “what?”. He went on to say that, I could have been a World Cup level goalkeeper.

For a quick backstory, I played soccer in my youth but around age eleven, I gave up playing competitively because I focused on baseball. I couldn’t play both AAU baseball in the summer and high-level soccer; there wasn’t enough time and probably not enough money. I wasn’t even a goalie back then. In high school, I started playing rec soccer and played goalie but to make a connection that I could have been a goalie for a World Cup team was well, alarming and head shaking.

Things like this made me cautious about our relationship. It kind of came to a head one summer when he showed up in Omaha, Nebraska to try to hang out with my friends and me at the College World Series. He knew we would be there because every summer I make a trip to Omaha for the opening weekend. He started calling and texting that he was in the stadium. I tried to ignore it for a bit. In one of my most shameful moments, I remember seeing him in the concourse during a trip to the bathroom and I quickly dodged into a corner and turned my back, hoping to go unseen. He never did see me, or at least I don’t think he did. My friends and I all returned to our hotel room but my dad was still calling. Pleading to let him join for dinner or a drink. It was embarrassing, all of this unfolding in front of my friends and seemingly keeping us hostage in our hotel room so we would not run into him. Eventually, I just lost it with him via the phone. The cracks in our relationship were already there but they had now just gotten bigger.

He didn’t seem okay and he was unwilling to listen to the people around him. It continued to hurt the relationships around him. His family and friends started to put up more barriers. Especially as his mom got sick and passed away, a situation that saw him do a lot of damage to his siblings and his mom. It was painful to watch and I know I felt helpless.

He remarried in the fall of 2016 but no one went to his wedding. Not because we didn’t like the idea that he was getting married or not liking his fiancé. He didn’t tell anyone until very close to the wedding and so some people couldn’t make it and some people didn’t want to because the relationship had deteriorated past that point. I am not sure if pretended this wasn’t happing because he could not admit it or really didn’t think it had gotten as bad as it did.

Eventually, I got to a place where I could manage our relationship. I came to terms with what probably was going to be our relationship from here on out. We could get together for short periods of time, spaced out over the year. Our meetings usually involved a public place, as I felt this would ensure there weren’t any outbursts or overly awkward moments. We talked a little about life, a lot about sports, and occasionally politics or current events. It seemed like we were in an okay place. My daughter was born in the fall of 2019 and he was able to meet her, though I am not sure we even have a photo of them together.

This is how it was until the late winter of 2020. Nothing about our relationship changed but the world changed. COVID struck and everything went on a pause. Eventually, when the weather got warmer we started to hang out with people outside. He got to see his granddaughter. We would occasionally get together outside and hang out for an afternoon. I would send him photos now and then, though I am bad about that stuff so I wish I did it more often.

As we all know, eventually vaccines came out and people around us started to get back to some sense of normalcy. As we inched to the fall of 2021, and my daughter's second birthday, we agreed to hang out a week or so before she turned two. We got together in our garage, had a beer, and caught up. We talked about the pandemic a bit and how they were managing it. He talked about how his wife couldn’t be vaccinated for medical reasons, though this didn’t seem to add up, and he talked about not trusting the vaccine because it was still so new. This wasn’t surprising to me, my dad didn’t trust the government or the powers-at-be for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t over the top; he just always thought people had ulterior motives, maybe because he always did as well. He never specifically said he wasn’t vaccinated and I never specifically asked, I just read between the lines and figured he wasn’t.

This gave me pause about hanging out with him and his wife as the weather got colder. Our daughter couldn’t be vaccinated and although she most likely would be okay, hanging out with someone who was unvaccinated didn’t seem like a wise choice. We knew they were going out, which was fine with us, we never faulted them for that. It did worry me as I assumed he was not vaccinated and in his early 60’s. He wanted to get together with us shortly after Christmas and my plan was to ask if he had been vaccinated the next time we talked about getting together.

Instead, I found myself asking a nurse to confirm my suspicion.

On January 8, I got a call from his wife that he was in the hospital and on oxygen. The following day he was put on a ventilator. Thanks to amazing hospital staff, we were able to Zoom into his room. A truly strange and sobering experience. The first time we were able to get a look in the room it looked as if he had been hooked up to a 1960s computer. Obviously, it looked more high-tech but there were machines that looked to be at least five feet tall surrounding him and cords going each and every way. Each day for 21 days we got updates some good and some bad.

They tried to help him recover but he never did.

We all gathered around our computers on Zoom to watch as he passed away, his hand held by a nurse who did not know him. In a way, in the end, I think a lot of us felt like we no longer knew him either.

Where is the victory dying while holding the hand of a stranger?

Where is the victory in avoiding something that most likely would have kept you alive?

Where is the victory in dying never getting to see your granddaughter grow up? Or even some of your own children?

Where is the victory in never being able to repair broken relationships?

Where is the victory in his death?

I am sure we could make up reasons for victory, I can hear them now being told to me. You'll be a better dad because of it, like being a good dad needs to come from trauma. Or now you can recover, as if there wasn't a possibly to recover any other way. Regardless, no reason would be satisfying or helpful.

Too often, we use the metaphor of victory to help us celebrate a death. This idea comes from believing death = heaven, but is that helpful? Too often, this leaves so much left unsaid or undealt with. Death isn’t a victory to celebrate. Death is tragic. Death is pain. Death is loss.

I am sure a similar story as this has occurred hundreds of thousands of times.

Even if heaven exists and we get to see loved ones again, the metaphor that there is victory in death should perish. It keeps us from dealing with the here and now. It is a barrier to progress, growth, and accountability.

The promise of heaven can’t be a tool to help us hide in the corner, shielding ourselves from the pain of the world or our own accountability.

My dad’s pain from CoVID may be gone but the residual pain will continue, I can attest to that even now.