Death Pairs Well With Casseroles - Somewhere Out There Excerpt -

So many casseroles.

Why were there always casseroles?

And pimento cheese sandwiches. And egg salad sandwiches. And potato salad. And green beans. Fried okra. Corn. Rolls. And of course several boxes of fried chicken.

I walked up and down the fold-out tables. I skipped the casseroles and picked through the fried chicken boxes. I took out two drumsticks. It didn’t matter that they were drumsticks, I was just going to eat the fried parts and throw the rest away.

I carried my paper plate and Dixie cup of sweet tea and wove between red-eyed ladies in flowing floral dresses and men with starched button-downs tucked into their Wranglers. My mom and dad were somewhere in that mass of people. Despite all the food, I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like these feelings.

I walked through the sliding glass door into the backyard. A wooden fence separated the yard from a pasture that fell away down the hill to the woods below.  A few kids stood by a fence next to a tree with a swing.

One of the girls in my elementary school class sat in the swing and stared out at the field. Her brother was the reason we were all here at her house.

“So how are you doing?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said and kept staring at the field.

“Um, I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said.

I didn’t like this. This wasn’t fun at all. I wanted to go home, but judging by how crowded it was in that house and how many people my parents were talking to, we were going to be there for a while. I thought about trying to lighten the mood by balancing on the fence or making a joke, but nothing came to mind. So I wandered back over to my plate of food still resting on the post.

Another friend from our class walked up and stood next to me.

“Sometimes there ain’t nothing you can say,” he said. “Sometimes people just need to eat and cry.”

He would know. Not too long ago, we ate fried chicken and casseroles because of his brother.

“O Death, where is thy sting?” wrote a man named Paul long ago.

I could tell Paul where it was. Death’s sting was inside that house with those two sobbing parents. It was next to that girl with the blank eyes on that swing.

I looked around at the field, the woods, my friends, and all those people in that house and that moment, for perhaps the first time in my young life, it hit me—none of this would last.

It didn’t seem fair.

This beautiful world I was just beginning to explore. The Ouachita Mountains, the Caddo River, the humming cicadas, the bounding white-tail deer, the laughing mockingbirds, the digging crawdads—even the water mocassins. All of it was fleeting.

And it only took something as simple as taking a turn too fast on the winding highways around our small town for it all to be gone. 

I looked around at all the people there that day, someday a bunch of other folks would stand around and cry and share poignant stories and eat casserole for every single person here—myself included.

I looked down at my empty Dixie cup by the fence post. I wasn’t about to go back into that house and get more sweet tea.

Nope.

I didn’t like this feeling one bit. Not one bit.

I decided the best course of action would be to just ignore it.

Unfortunately for me, my dad was a pastor in a small town. And my close friend Alex’s parents owned the local funeral home. So I was stuck with it. Stuck with the hospitals, the visitations, the funerals, the graveside services, the sobbing family members, and the casserole lunches.

Time for a new tactic.

I’d face my fear of Death head-on.

When his parents were busy, Alex and I snuck into the rooms where the bodies of old people lay in shiny caskets between flowers, wreaths, and pictures. (We figured old people wouldn’t mind.) One of us would go into the room and put our hands on the casket. The other one would turn off the light and pull the door shut—leaving the other standing alone in the dark with a dead old person. The longest either of us lasted was 20 seconds. We pounded on the door to be let out and each took no small amount of glee in taking our sweet time to open the door.

Surprisingly that tactic didn’t help me much.

During my adolescence, a tragic number of young people died—mostly from car wrecks. It was just as heartbreaking for our community every time. It kept happening and I kept finding myself at a visitation service eating pimento cheese sandwiches.

If I couldn’t ignore Death and if I couldn’t face it, then I would run from it.

I knew Death happened in other places, but in other places, I might not have to be as close to it as I was in Glenwood. I could keep it at arm’s length.

However, as I traveled I discovered traces of Death’s sting everywhere. It was in the monuments and mausoleums in Europe. It was in the eyes of the poor in places like Mozambique, Afghanistan, and Papua where the child mortality rates are tragically high. It was on the bombed-out battlefields of the Middle East. It was left in the wake of earthquakes and typhoons. It was in cancer diagnoses.

One night in England, I was playing basketball with a bunch of friends. A group of Filipinos came into the gym. One was wearing a jersey that had “John 3:16” on it.

“What do you think those numbers mean?” my friend Paddy asked.

“Seriously?” I asked. Everybody I grew up with knew what that meant. I took a swig of my water bottle and rattled it off for him.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, and whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

“Not perish? Seriously?” Paddy said. “What a load of bollocks.”

Paddy’s mother was dying from cancer.

See Paul? Can’t you see? This is where Death’s sting is.

No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, no matter how long I tried to stay in a room with a casket and face it, no matter how far I ran from it—Death had an ugly, gaping maw that would swallow all of us.

I recently went back to Glenwood for my best friend’s dad’s funeral.

I sat in the pew and listened to people give eulogies and tell stories. My dad preached a sermon in his same familiar cadence. I listened to my mom sing. I watched my best friend and his family cry. There it was again.

Death’s sting.

After the service, we drove back to the church. I walked into the fellowship hall. There were fold-out tables. There were women in flowing floral dresses. There were men in button-down shirts. And on the tables were boxes of fried chicken, casseroles, and sweet tea.

And there were tears.

And there was laughter.

Once, long ago, a man stepped out of a tomb.

He said was going to build something the very gates of Death would not be able to stand against.

Because that man climbed out of that tomb Paul wrote down some words mocking death and its gaping maw.

“When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

O Death, where is your victory?

O Death, where is your sting?”

Maybe Paddy is right. Maybe it is all a load of bollocks. I am sure it felt that way to him.

Or maybe … impossibly … Death’s gates are being bashed in by a bunch of old ladies in floral dresses and men wearing tucked-in button-down shirts.

Maybe Death is not the end.

Maybe Death has been battered by a Man who is not just a man but also a Lamb. Maybe this Man really did step out of an empty tomb.

And maybe there’s reason to have hope that someday Paul was right.

Maybe Death really will one day be swallowed up in victory.

And when it is, I know it will be washed down with casseroles, fried chicken, and sweet tea.

#somewhereoutthere