Blessed are those who mourn, part I
Jesus promises life beyond death: “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:26). This promise started to really matter to me when people I loved started dying. I have thought that because of this hope, death might hurt less; I might be less sad. It does not; I was not. But hope grew surer too. If anything, death hurts more because there’s hope to face it. This promise led me through grief, not around it. I write about losing my father last spring because that is where I feel the depth of pain and power of hope. I pray that by naming the pain, you might not feel crazy or alone when loss crashes over you.
“At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him…”
(Hebrews 2:8,9)
My father died on May 30, 2020 of a glioblastoma brain tumor. My dad’s hope was tangible yet his struggle against death was real. I watched him take a journey he did not want with the person who loved him the most. I watched him wrestle with Christ himself. It was the most sacred and loving and hopeful thing I have ever seen. Kicking and screaming included.
They discovered his brain tumor almost exactly a year before. My father had spent the day preparing to lead a Bible study at a parishioner’s house. My mother came home during the time it should have happened. He was on his leopard print chair watching his iPad. He had completely forgotten. It was so out of character for him. He had founded a Christian ministry to prep schools and a leadership training institute for Anglican bishops and clergy around the world; he had been the rector of churches, the dean of a seminary (check out his memorial website: PeterCMoore.org). Not only that but he loved this Bible study. The hosts had a gracious apartment in downtown Charleston and they served fancy desserts with perfectly paired wine. Dad would not miss a good dessert. This was not like him. Mom worried he was having a stroke. She took him to the Medical University of South Carolina emergency ward. They found the tumor, the size of a mandarin orange. They planned to operate. She called my sister, my brother, and me. We spoke to a neuro surgeon and friend of my father. He said it would be good to see him before the surgery. My siblings flew in from California. They would many more times that year, even when the global pandemic quarantined the world.
I couldn’t even pronounce the name, “glioblastoma,” for the first week in the hospital. It was so foreign to me. Since my initiation into this family, I see victims everywhere: John McCain, Joe Biden’s son, the founder of Charleston’s famous bridge run, friends of friends, and most personally, my sister-in-law’s father. Her story made all of us very aware of how these tumors can change a person’s personality. It made us more grateful for the one our dad had, if he had to have one. It made him more impulsive, more forgetful, but very funny.
“I have to say, I love the attention,” he said as my sister planned her fourth trip in four months. His friends, colleagues, and mentees made special trips to see him all year long. During his eight strong months, my parents received hundreds of cards from people expressing their gratitude. Gourmet food showed up at their doorstep. “I came to say goodbye,” said one, “but you don’t seem that sick.” He didn’t. He was able to run two Anglican Leadership Institutes (with help), each a month long. He preached at St. Michael’s and at Holy Cross in I’On. He was himself and yet not.
I don’t remember what we laughed about on the morning of the surgery, but we all laughed and told stories right into the operating room. We had confiscated Dad’s phone. He had lost his privileges after some calls to his investment broker. The Rev. Al Zadig visited and anointed my dad with oil and prayed for healing. I wept. This might be it. He could die in this operation, or his personality could. I prepared to lose him so many times over that year. I would be grateful, honored, mad, sad, frustrated, disappointed—and then he would go on living. This accelerated as the cancer did. I would feel so empty after every time. You get ready, then it doesn’t happen, then after a million of those—it does in a breath.
I was losing a man who had been such a steady force in my faith. I was naked facing my fellow pastors and Christians without him. I was lonely with my family as he left his usual role. I was tired from fits of grief that would catch me as I dropped off the kids in the car or when I saw a mutual friend of my dad’s and mine. I stopped wearing makeup for months out of practicality. It was just easier than cleaning up “a zombie face,” as our daughters call it. I was losing life the way I knew it. We all were.
My dad struggled with his death the most. “I want to be healed,” he told me. He hoped and prayed for healing. He submitted to chemotherapy, radiation, and (efforts at) diet change. “I’ve stopped drinking orange juice in the morning because the sugar feeds the tumor,” he told us over cookies. Though he lost his car, his hip replacement, his tennis, his usual role as the leader (not the patient), he was not depressed. He still had plans. He had plans to work, plans to buy a golf cart so he could drive, plans to write a book. His plans showed how much he wanted to recover.
After eight months, the tumor regrew. Sean and I played hooky on our Bible study and went to Mom and Dad’s house the night of the news. The four of us crowded into his study as the night shaded the sky. They were so disappointed. They had hoped for a miracle. We reviewed the year—all the bishops, pastors, churches, and friends who had prayed for him from around the globe. Even then, he still hoped for more time. His first surgery went so well, perhaps a second one would be the same? He’d been anointed with oil and prayed for healing many times. I had even anointed him with the congregation of Holy Cross at I’On surrounding him and my mom. Our daughter, Rhyan, had reached out her hand from the huddle and put in on Mom’s. Dad did not want to leave. We did not want Mom to be left.
My father’s loss was different from all of ours. He was dying physically. None of us could join him or stop it from happening. We were all helpless. He had glioblastoma, none of us did. I watched him wrestle with Jesus, his only companion in death. My dad was going physically where his soul had already gone.
The Apostle Paul wrote,
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
Jesus had already wrestled Dad to the death as a teenager. His Episcopal boarding school told him Jesus was a moral teacher to imitate. At the time, his mother told him Jesus was the leader of a cult in rejection of the world and other Christians. His friends told him Jesus was irrelevant to the riches and popularity that awaited his high society life. Yet, the Son of God walked through all of those holograms to meet him in the nighttime quiet of his boarding school chapel. In his memoir, “From Dry Bones; Reflections on an Unpredictable Life,” my dad explained he had always assumed that Jesus died, rose from the dead, then died again somewhere else. On that night, he became quite aware that Jesus was real, alive, and present with him. The Holy Spirit compelled him to give his life to Jesus. St. Paul would say Jesus killed my dad alone and made him alive again in Him. Jesus brought him into his forgiveness, won on the cross, and his promise of everlasting life beyond the grave. Now, his body—the one we knew—was the last part of him to enter into that promise.
After his second surgery, he was often disoriented. When I read his books to him, he would become clear. He remembered this night in the chapel vividly, as he did all the memories in his book. That was his first death.
Paul says all of creation groans for Christ to return and fulfill his promise of redemption. It is now and not yet. Jesus has conquered death and sin and yet Christians still sin until they die. One day he will return and give us new outsides to match the new insides. On that day, we won’t struggle anymore with sin, sickness, or death ever again. Until then we live by faith through the grace of Jesus. Until then we groan for it. Romans 8:24 says:
“And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23).
We live both in his promise and in our struggle. Jesus is so familiar with suffering and so confident in his victory over it that he leads us into the darkest part of the night before the dawn. When I said goodbye, it looked like Jesus did not conquer death. It looked like he did not answer prayer. It looked like there’s no hope. On the outside. Yet, it was the most hopeful thing on the inside. “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him” (Hebrews 2:8). I saw Jesus everywhere.
In the struggle, I saw Jesus love my dad and mom. It assured me that Jesus was in this—even this awful cancer—and would redeem it. Cancer was not running loose out of his control. It was in subjection to him, even though we didn’t see it. But we did see him. Most importantly, my father did. As Christ stripped away all my dad’s productivity, all his functionality, all his accomplishments, he showed my dad how special he was just by being Peter. My mother says they shared some of their sweetest moments together ever that year. God gathered the friends who would remain with her after he died. My parents knew the loneliness of leadership. That year, they were never alone. God showered him and her with love even as he took them where they did not want to go.
My brother called to tell me dad was in the Roper Hospice Cottage. He began to hiccup so violently that my mom could not manage it at home.
The hospice booklet, “Gone From My Sight,” prepared us for the process of dying. I arrived in my dad’s room. He was past words, past food, past drink. He gave me a nod of the head and a quick grin, but he was busy. He would mumble and reach up and out with his hands as if to hug at times. He would move his hands in a three-fold pattern like he would do while illustrating a point. “It looks like he’s preaching,” commented a nurse. He was replaying his life and letting go of it all at once. “You can tell he is not afraid,” another nurse said. Dad had not only accepted his death—he was going toward it. He was going to Jesus. I was so honored to see it. They had finished their last struggle. Dad was at peace. He was ready.
The next day he was quiet, head tilted to the side, mouth open. When my brother and sister-in-law arrived, Mom, Sean, and I held a “Commendation for the Dying” service in his room from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Sean played a song he wrote for him. We read his favorite Psalm, Psalm 103, and reflected on it. He mumbled then, as if to say, “Amen.” We prayed for him and cried. After that the only time he made a sound was during a seizure. It took nine days for his boundless energy to leave him.
Jesus had struggled with his soul until my dad had real peace. I saw his peace as he entered into the dying process. Dad had his last death. It looked like the opposite of Jesus’ promise. Yet it was the climax of hope. Jesus was answering prayers for healing. His way. He was giving Dad more life. His way. He was ending his struggle. It looked like death was not in subjection to Jesus, like death had its hold on my dad. However, Jesus was in control the whole time. He was redeeming the suffering, bringing all of us into his own. That is where Jesus meets us right now: in the disconnect, where things are broken, where they don’t seem in subjection to his promise. He loves us into it and through it. He is with us, with us, with us. The joy that lies ahead far surpasses the suffering we endure here. Jesus carries us through our last breath in the struggle. He will be the first one we see in heaven. Jesus is all my dad has. He is enough. For any of us.
Mother’s day 2020, two weeks before dad died. See his legacy PeterCMoore.org
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