If you want to live a good life, get an address on Cemetery Street

“Ecc 7:2 It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart”

When I was growing up in the city of Ilorin, Nigeria, we always go for choir practice, and on our way to the church, we had to pass through a cemetery, just at the back of our church. As pleasant as the stroll to church always was, the unnerving part is the fact that we had to go by the cemetery. We would often times make a brisk, silent walk past the cemetery, but when we are on our way back in the evening, we will often make a mad dash right past it in terror of the dead.

The cemetery was at the end of a street, or at the beginning of it, depending on the side you enter from, and I often wondered why people will chose to live close to a cemetery or on the same street as dead people! I can understand that our church was next to the cemetery, after all Jesus had already conquered the grave and had defeated death and that the Pastor who lives in the mission house can’t obviously be afraid of the dead, but I had a problem with the fact that I had to go past the cemetery to church because I was no Pastor and does not have the power that he has. That was me at 10! This is a much older me and I am no longer afraid of Cemeteries, even though I am not a fan of them either.

I recently attended the burial of a senior Pastor colleague, and we were on our way in a convoy to the cemetery where he was going to be buried. It was far out of town but along a long community road and we would travel for almost 30mins on a long, densely populated single carriage way road with houses on both sides of it. As our convoy snaked along the road, I could see people looking at the convoy in a tired and ‘we have seen it all kind of way’. Obviously, hearses must be going back and forth that road perhaps several times a day. I think they were more curious about who it was that was going to be buried than they were sad or sober about the fact that one more person was going into the place of the dead.

As usual, in situations like that, I had an epiphany! If you have seen many people die and buried, it is possible that you may have become desensitized to the reality of death! I have fortunately not lost too many close people to become desensitized to the fact of death, but I wondered about those people on the road. They see scenes like this all the time, and they are used to the spectacle. I am however always deeply affected by burials and the finality of committing a body to mother earth. That is the end of man, his life, his purpose, his place, his gifts, his treasures and possessions, his personality, strength, weakness, achievements! It is the end, and there is no going back to it! Of course I know that the end of man is the day he dies, and I am being a bit melodramatic here, but in the spirit of closure, the day he is laid down to the earth and covered up looks like the real end. We have to move on then. We have to forget!

We usually go in great processions and deliver him to the ground to be on his own. No matter what you add to him, he is on his own. Don’t tell me; I know that the body is just a container. On the day of his death, I know he already left that container. His soul and spirit had already gone on to their waiting place before the final day of judgement. The body we are burying is just a symbolism, and as closures go, burial does not quite do us a lot of good, because we still know where the body is. Perhaps the Indian method of cremating the body is better, but then again, they still have the ashes, so nothing really gives closure except an understanding that with time, the pains slowly go away; with time, the memories slowly fades; with time, the space where the man was slowly yields to another; the end of a man, the futility of it all except the life was lived for purpose and lived for God.

Talking about desensitization, the scripture that I put up probably does not work a lot for most people that are exposed to death and dying. Think about the pall bearers, they take the body, deliver it to the earth, sometimes even disrespecting and desecrating the memory of the departed by the things they do with the body in their dancing and the practice of their act. Once the body hits the ground, their job is done, and they are praying for the next business, which is of course another death, with its attendant pains to those who were close to the dead.

Then there is the cemetery worker, who digs the grave, covers it with earth after the body is delivered to the grave, and who also tends and keeps the burial ground. That is his daily work. Ironically, his source of living is found in the place of the dead, in the pain of death and eternal separation. He also does not think about the lessons the Almighty wants us to learn from the house of mourning. The more dead people are brought in, the more allowance or pay he gets; that’s what he thinks about mostly!

There is also the driver of the hearse (or ambulance as we may prefer to call it) that carries the dead to his final resting place; let me correct that, the final resting place of the body. He has carried so many; big and small, famous or hardly known; beautiful and not so; rich and poor; old and young. I wonder what goes through his minds as he drives the coffin to the cemetery. Does he really think about the dead, the kind of death; the life that was lived by the dead; and so on? I guess after a while, it becomes just a day’s work.

Then consider that the mortuary attendant. He lives with the dead, works on the dead, prepares the dead for the journeys of their body to mother earth. He eats amongst them, makes a call to the living while he is washing the dead. Does he think about the fact that these were men who probably were on their way to something when something brought them to him? Does he wonder which way their spirit and soul would go; whether to a place or rest or a place of eternal torment?

Again, does the coffin maker, the embalmer, the wreath maker, and all of these people really think to what end their craft is? We all wake up in the morning praying to God to bless our business, but in our blessings lie the beginning of another man’s end journeys. I don’t have a problem with what we do for a living, but we should learn vital lessons from it if it has to do with the transition of the souls of men to a great beyond.

So many people earn their living from the dead. There are doctor and the nurses who struggle to keep the dying alive till the moment when they give up, allowing them to start the transition. They are often there in the man’s final moment, sometimes helping to start the journey by withdrawing what sustains the life; or they use their hands to cover they face of the dead with clothe, or even sometimes helping to shut their open eyes forever.

I often wonder why some people die with their eyes wide open, while others shut their own eyes in a sleep of death. I wonder what the dying was seeing as they depart this world giving up the spirit. I wonder what they were thinking at the exact moment when the breath is taken from them. What really is the process of death? Is it the same for the man who lays down to death and the man who was surprised into it? That I think is a thought or another post!

In any case, I think the whole process after death is for the rest of us still living. I think the point of it all is not about the dead but about us who remain. I have been in funerals where people around are not even stopping to consider the state of their own life or the condition of their own soul. They are going through the mourning motions, but still making calls, striking deals, hating people, ignoring the message of the moment which is saying, “what if this is now your own end”.

The people who see death every day should not become used to it. The whole point of the scripture that says to go to the house of mourning is to allow us live our lives well, free of hatred; unforgiveness; discord; envy and all such works. The point of it is allow us seek our maker and live for Him daily considering our end and. It is to allow us get to a point where we see live not as a place of endless and mindless chase for temporal and transit pleasures, but a place where we live to do the work that God has created us to do, whatever it is, so that on completion, we can be ready to go to a place of rest; our eternal dwelling place.

If we don’t remember that, least of all the possibility, the timing and the manner of own death, we will probably not consider our end, and from that point, consider our life. People who live on Cemetery Street have an opportunity to relate with the phenomenon of death every day. At least they see people who have lived in the bodies that are now being turned into or has been turned into dust. The headstones talk about who they were and what they achieved on earth, but that may not be enough to qualify them for a place in heaven. The people who live on Cemetery Street are expected to be able to use this daily spectacle as a reminder for them to live for their Creator, except of course they have become so used to it that it just becomes part of the scenery.

Death is a reality, and it is not the end of life. It is at best the end of life on this side of the divide, but it is not the end of man. If you have ever dreamt, you will know that the soul goes to places the body have never been. It is same when you breathe your last; your soul and your spirit goes on, continuing the journey to another place.

Unfortunately, there are not enough houses on Cemetery Street in a physical sense of it. Then what should you do? You should wake up every morning thinking, “if this was my last day on earth, what would be the most important thing I will do?” No man has the knowledge of what will happen to him the very next minute? What we know for certain is the very instant that we are. What if that is our last? We may make plans, and live with confidence that we will have a long life, but since no man knows the day of his birth, the exact time he sleeps or can control the process of waking up, we should also know that we don’t have a say concerning our final minute on earth. The question to ask is, “where will my soul and spirit go when I step away from this body?”

Death has an important lesson for us; the house of mourning is the school where we learn it. God bless you!