"Good" Friday

I have never really understood the name "Good Friday." While I understand that the intent is to look forward to the resurrection event, thus a "good" death on the cross, I still think that a better name would be "Death Friday," or perhaps "Mourning Friday." It is a day to think about the death of Jesus two thousand years ago, a true tragedy from any perspective, as an innocent man was horribly killed. For those from the Christian tradition, it is a day where God's incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ ended in death, a death that for two days seemed devastatingly final.

Today is also a "good" day to reflect on death and mourning in our own lives. This is something I tend to avoid, as such reflection can be rather painful and deeply saddening. Indeed, I have even been known as someone who avoids most funerals, as the profound helplessness that overcomes me is often too much to bear. I think of my own life today, there have been some deaths in my life as of late, both literally and metaphorically. Some physical deaths that come to mind today are my friends Mike and Stacy's son William, who died at four months of age last year. I think of my good friend, Dale Rocheleau, a fit and cheerful man and father in his forties who passed away from a heart attack the evening after I visited with him. I think of a high school friend, George Ritchey, who died in a car accident a few years after high school. I think of Erica Pierson, the daughter of family friends who passed away from a mysterious liver disease before the age of 30. I think of Jacques Deale, the previous pastor at the small Nazarene church that our family moved to in 1995, how he said goodbye to his three teenage boys as he lay dying of cancer.

There have been other deaths in my life. Some dying that has occurred on the inside as I have struggled with depression, my own character flaws, and dreams that no longer seem possible. Right now these things seem to pale in comparison to the tragedies I listed above, but I would be hasty to pass these over, as they leave a profound and lingering mark on my life. Death of any kind has a way of crystalizing things for those left behind. Physical death causes family and friends to remember and cherish the aspects of the person who has passed away. Internal death leads one to determine what has survived, what can be healed, and what is gone. It is a reorientation of sorts, perhaps a preparation for new growth of some kind. But today I hesitate to find the silver lining. Instead I recognize death for what it is, an utterly terrible loss.