Dan Rector died on March 5 — Dang it hurts, Dan

By John Pearring

Saturday of the Third Week of Lent may not fit this reflection, but here they are anyway:
Hosea 6:1-6
Luke 18:9-14

A dear friend died yesterday, and I am the guy assigned to deliver a reflection on Saturday’s readings. I can only think about Dan Rector’s death and the sadness of losing his company. The readings don’t fit what I’m feeling, and it’s likely true for the rest of the men in our group.

Psalm 48:14 - For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end.

Members of an old man’s group like ours are formed to love each other. That’s the basic premise of all friendships. In the company of men who gather specifically to share our faith, there is an unwritten final step after all the good stuff of making friends. Loss. 

John 16:22 - Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again, and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. 

The good stuff is that we gather to pray for each other, ask each other for prayers, and be faithful in all that friendship requires. We call upon God to be with us, and we celebrate the reality of his presence. 

That’s really why our old man’s group works. But then comes the bad stuff—death. It is unwitting, unwilling, and undeniable. We are going to lose the very point of the friendships that draw us together. We yearn for the company of friends.

What we do silently, especially in a group where the average age makes us regular visitors to death’s door, is never to say aloud what we agree to. We were always going to suffer the loss of Dan. We may not put it like that, but hanging around with a bunch of Catholics is surely an agreement, unwritten or not. Not knowing the traffic rules doesn’t exonerate us from getting a ticket. Not knowing that we agreed to suffer over losing a dear friend doesn’t change the fact.

There is good news, though. We lose our friends together. We spend time with each other, knowing that tragedy awaits. We get to know the wives, children, grandchildren, family, and friends of our buddies. We're praying now for Vicki's comfort in this most awful of trials. We’ve got a scripture verse for that.

Matthew 5:4 - Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

The unwritten charter of friendships has to include grief. If we didn’t know that before making friends, the shock is really no more awful than knowing it ahead of time. That’s because death, the inevitability of life, hurts every single time. We won’t become accustomed to friends dying.

Psalm 147:3 - He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

This time of our initial shock at Dan’s death is similar to that period just after experiencing a deep cut, where the wound throws us into a tizzy. We’ve not yet begun the repair of the wound with stitches, salves, and bandages. We’re going through the first stages of grief — denial and anger. We’ve yet to deal with the bargaining step. I don’t know how that will work. Depression settles in pretty fast, and some of us might already be there. Acceptance is still a ways away. 

Psalm 34:18 - The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

We need to be reminded that God is with Dan’s family and with us, which is why I’m including these scriptures. However, grief isn’t attended to quickly. The scriptures aren’t unhelpful, but can’t make the pain disappear. Dan isn’t going to be joining us on Wednesdays anymore. We can’t give him a call and ask how he’s doing or stop by and see him. 

Psalm 22:24 - For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.

Few men dwell on the crushing reality of grief. Because of Dan’t short quips at our meetings, where he’d lighten serious conversations with a joke or a silly reference, I immediately replayed his desire to make everyone laugh. It’s an inappropriate moment to say it, but I’m probably not the only one who can hear Dan restate a famous line about death. He quoted it several times: 

There’s a tombstone on a grave that reads, “I told you I was sick.”

Psalm 30:5 - Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

It’s morning as I write this reflection, but I’m still pretty weepy over the loss of Dan. Maybe tomorrow morning will be better.

Proverbs 14:32 - When calamity comes, the wicked are brought down, but even in death the righteous have a refuge.

C.S. Lewis has a famous quote regarding tribulation over the loss of a friend. “The real difficulty is—isn’t it—to adapt one’s steady belief about tribulation to this particular tribulation; for the particular, when it arrives, always seems so peculiarly intolerable.”

Lewis also wrote this: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.”

Dealing with death, certainly the raw reality of Dan’s passing, is a formidable task. We need to attend to it, though. We shouldn’t skip over the pain. Our readings this Lent have been dealing with suffering and its sacred place in our faith life. When Jesus told us to take up our crosses, this is the moment when we need to take him seriously.

Isaiah 25:8 - He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken.