#26: Where the Gospel Meets End of Life

#26: Where the Gospel Meets End of Life

Note: The Love Thy Neighborhood podcast is made for the ear, and not the eye. We would encourage you to listen to the audio for the full emotional emphasis of this episode. The following transcription may contain errors. Please refer to the audio before quoting any content from this episode. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So this past December, I met a guy named John Drage. John’s a collegiate pastor in Missouri, and he’s in his 50’s. He’s like super fit. He runs like Iron Man’s on the weekends just for fun. And I met him because he came to a workshop that I was teaching on burnout. So he had been pushing really hard and actually his wife had been getting concerned about his physical health because he was just getting increasingly exhausted. One of the symptoms that he was having were these recurring headaches. Here’s John.

JOHN DRAGE: I go to the doctor and he says, ‘I think these are migraines, but migraines normally don’t come on somebody. You don’t get ‘em when you’re 50.’ I’m 52, but he thinks they’re migraines. So he gives me some migraine medicine and we start, y’know, taking that and that helps a little bit.

JESSE EUBANKS: But not enough. Because just a couple weeks later, John ends up getting what he calls ‘the headache of his life.’

JOHN DRAGE: I’m that guy that works really hard even when he’s sick. A headache isn’t going to slow me down. This thing put me on my chair in my living room.

JESSE EUBANKS: So John begins to realize this was way more serious than just like a byproduct of burnout. So, John goes back to the doctor.

JOHN DRAGE: Then the doctor said, ‘Let’s just do an MRI’ and scheduled one for 7:00 in the evening and within, y’know, 15 minutes of leaving there, y’know, the MRI people called the doctor and the doctor called me from his house, said ‘John, this is really bad. You got a big brain tumor.’ This thing’s really big. It was about the size of my fist.

RACHEL SZABO: Holy cow! He’s got a brain tumor the size of his fist? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, it’s really bad.

RACHEL SZABO: Like that’s — that could kill you right?

JESSE EUBANKS: Well at that point, they actually — they don’t know. And so they actually scheduled John for surgery to remove the tumor. And to everyone’s relief, like the surgery goes really well and they’re able to remove the tumor, no problems, everything went great.

RACHEL SZABO: So then everything’s okay then, right? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Well I wouldn’t say that things were okay because, as John was recovering from the surgery in his hospital room, the doctor actually came in.

JOHN DRAGE: He comes in and says, ‘It’s Glioblastoma,’ which is the worst kind of brain cancer you can have.

RACHEL SZABO: Wait, so it was cancerous? The tumor was cancerous?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, so Glioblastoma. It’s the deadliest form of brain cancer. It has no cure. It is fatal.

JOHN DRAGE: It’s terminal. Median life expectancy is 18 to 20 months from diagnosis and then the five-year survival rate is 10% and the 10-year survival rate is 2%. And uh, we’re crushed.

JESSE EUBANKS: So at this point like there’s no guarantee how long John is gonna live. The only thing at this point that’s guaranteed is that John is going to die, and it’s gonna be sooner than later.

JOHN DRAGE: Am I scared? Heck yeah. What’s it going to be like to die? I don’t know. Nobody’s ever told me.

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JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Every episode we hear stories of social justice and Christian community.

JESSE EUBANKS: Today’s episode is where the gospel meets end of life. Death is universal. It affects all of us. We lose loved ones, and eventually we’ll all experience it ourselves.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, so today we’re gonna hear three different stories, and actually all of these stories are about people who experience death prematurely. Y’know, if you hear the phrase “end of life,” a lot of people will think ‘Oh, this is an elderly person, they’ve lived to a ripe old age, and now they’re thinking about their legacy and what they’re going to leave behind.’ But those aren’t the stories that we’re exploring today. These are stories of what happens when death comes unexpectedly. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Is there a good and right way to deal with it? How do we help people who are grieving? And what difference does our Christian faith make when death comes crashing into our world? Welcome to our corner of the urban universe.

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JESSE EUBANKS: So every year, Chapman University does this Survey of American Fears. They wanna know — what are Americans most afraid of? Uh, what do you think is on the list of Americans’ top ten fears?

RACHEL SZABO: Clowns.

JESSE EUBANKS: No, no. Not clowns.

RACHEL SZABO: Oh, no, that’s on the list of my top ten fears.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, well that would make my list too.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, but seriously though, uh, I think terrorism. Is terrorism on there? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Ah, that’s a good guess. So terrorism was actually not on there.

RACHEL SZABO: Surprising.

JESSE EUBANKS: So in 2018, some people said they were afraid of things like corrupt politicians or not having enough money. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: But among the top ten fears is the fear of death. So more than half, 57%, of all Americans said that they fear loved ones dying. 

RACHEL SZABO: That makes sense, but that’s interesting. They’re not afraid of their death? 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah not themselves, but people around them that they love dying. 

RACHEL SZABO: Well and that’s actually an unfortunate fear to have because the reality is that will eventually happen. Y’know I found this statistic that every day in the United States, about 7,452 people die. To put that another way, that’s one death every 12 seconds.

JESSE EUBANKS: Which does sound kinda morbid, y’know, but if we think about it long enough, y’know, death actually creates a paradox for Christians.

RACHEL SZABO: What do you mean?

JESSE EUBANKS: Well on the one hand, like death is incredibly sad and painful and terrible. But then on the other hand, as Christians, it’s also the thing that gives way to eternal life. I mean there’s a time coming where we won’t experience death anymore.

RACHEL SZABO: Oh I see, and so the paradox would be how can both of these things be true. How do we respond to death when it brings both incredible sorrow but also incredible hope at the same time?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, I mean so it begs the question, what do we do as Christians, when death and loss enter our lives? And God doesn’t leave us to figure it out on our own because we have a Savior who is very acquainted with death.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus and his disciples come to the town of Bethany, where his friend Lazarus has been dead for four days.  

RACHEL SZABO: Well, and he wasn’t just friends with Lazarus. He was also friends with his sisters Mary and Martha too. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And when he comes to see them, both Mary and Martha give Jesus the same response. They each say to him — ‘Lord, if you had just been here, my brother would not have died.’

RACHEL SZABO: And that phrase can be taken kind of two ways. Y’know, it could be said as a trusting statement. Y’know, ‘Lord, I believe your presence brings life. If you had been here, there would be life, but since you were absent, there’s not. Or it could also be accusatory, y’know, ‘Lord, where were you when we needed you? If you had been here, this wouldn’t be happening.’

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah this is like one of those times you really wish the Bible just came with emojis.

RACHEL SZABO: Right.

JESSE EUBANKS: So we don’t know for sure how Martha or Mary meant the statement, but based on context, it would seem that Martha was speaking out of duty and Mary out of emotion. Perhaps Martha was focused on saying the right things and Mary on being authentic. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, but regardless of which way they meant it, I love that this story is in the Bible because it shows us an important reality that death impacts each of us differently. Yes, we’re all impacted by death, but the way it impacts us can look different.

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay, well, let’s talk about that. Because in our stories today, death shows up in a bunch of different ways. So the first story we heard was about my friend John Drage and his terminal cancer diagnosis. So the diagnosis showed up suddenly while death was like this looming thing that’s gonna come eventually. And we’re gonna return to John’s story towards the end of the episode, but other times it’s not the diagnosis but death itself that shows up suddenly. Okay, so, you know Drequan, right?

RACHEL SZABO: Oh Drequan. Yeah. He was your assistant in the office for a while.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yep. So Drequan was my personal assistant here in the office. He is currently a part of Love Thy Neighborhood. But his background is that he’s from the inner city from the south. And I say that to say, like it was a neighborhood that was deeply impacted by poverty and violence.

RACHEL SZABO: It was a rough neighborhood.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, it was just a tough neighborhood, like it was the kind of neighborhood where you would hear gunshots and it was very common for people to have friends and family members that would get locked up. In fact, when Drequan was just 10 years old, his older brother was actually locked up and sent to prison. And that was hard for Drequan because he had had a really good relationship with his brother. And now, fast forward 10 more years — so Drequan’s now 20 — and his brother’s finally getting released. Here’s Drequan. 

DREQUAN JACKSON: In my mind I’m thinking like, ‘Man, my brother’s about to get out and he’s about to be this wonderful person that I, that I remember at 10 years old.’

JESSE EUBANKS: Okay so for clarity’s sake, let’s just call his brother Tayveon. That’s actually not his real name, but we’ll call him that. So once Tayveon came home, Drequan could tell that he was not the guy that he remembered from 10 years ago.

DREQUAN JACKSON: I think at that moment I realized how much prison does, what prison do to a human mind. You’re not going to come out the same person that you were when you went in. You’re just not.

JESSE EUBANKS: And there’s a certain level of grief for Drequan in this moment because Tayveon isn’t the person that he remembers from 10 years ago. But he’s still hopeful because at least his brother is out, so now there’s a chance that they can bond and become friends again. But then, late one night, all that changed.

DREQUAN JACKSON: Around 12, 12 or 1, I’m sitting at the house by myself and I start to doze off and I get a phone call. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So it’s like the middle of the night, the phone rings, the call’s from an unknown phone number, and probably like a lot of us, like y’know, you get a phone call, it’s from somebody you don’t know, you ignore it, like you don’t answer it. But Dre said that there was just something inside of him that said ‘I need to pick up the phone.’

DREQUAN JACKSON: So I answered it, and it was my auntie.

JESSE EUBANKS: Now Dre says normally like his auntie is really jovial, like she loves to joke a lot and cut up, but something was different this time.

DREQUAN JACKSON: She was like just trembling over her words, like she had something to say but she didn’t wanna say it to me. So she gave the phone to my uncle, y’know, and he tells me like, ‘Man, y’know, call your mom.’ I’m like, ‘Man, why are you telling me to call my mom? Like what’s going on? Nobody telling me what’s happening.’

JESSE EUBANKS: And then finally like his uncle gets the words out. And he says they don’t know all the details yet, but Tayveon was at the dollar store. Someone thought that he was trying to steal something. There was an altercation between him and the clerk. Shots were fired. And Tayveon was dead. 

RACHEL SZABO: Man. That’s the phone call we all hope we’ll never get. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, I mean in an instant your world goes from like normal to chaotic. It like turns upside down. 

DREQUAN JACKSON: So immediately it was just like rage. It was like hurt. So I’m yelling, I’m trying my best not to break things in the house. I’m just angry that I’m by myself, so I feel like I’m alone. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Drequan needed someone to be there with him in the chaos, and so he calls up his mentor and he says he needs to come over.

DREQUAN JACKSON: So I get to his house and, y’know, I’m pacing back and forth in the middle of the street. I mean it’s like three in the morning, and I’m pacing back and forth, back and forth, and saying like, ‘Man, how am I to tell my mom?’

JESSE EUBANKS: So his mentor suggests that before they do anything that they need to confirm the information first, like maybe there’s a chance that everything is fine and that —

RACHEL SZABO: — and that’s not what happened.

JESSE EUBANKS: — that that’s not what happened. So they hop in his mentor’s car in search of a police officer.

DREQUAN JACKSON: You go around the hood, and most of the time you see a police officer every two minutes. But this time, for some reason it took us 30 minutes to find a police officer. And even at the time that we find one, it was like, we had to be mindful, y’know. So as we try to flag the police officer down, we’re trying to make sure like he don’t think that we’re a threat either.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and when Dre was telling me about this part of the story, it like, it broke my heart because the reality is like Dre is also thinking like ‘If it is true that my brother’s dead, I don’t want my mom to lose two sons tonight.’ Like he could get shot, and so he has to be so particular about how he approaches the officer.

DREQUAN JACKSON: So, as we’re flagging the police down, we’re flashing our lights, y’know, but we got our hands outside the window to let ‘em know like ‘Hey, we need help.’ 

JESSE EUBANKS: So Drequan and his mentor, they go up, they talk to the police officer. The police officer gets on his scanner, and he confirms for them — yes, there was a shooting at the store. Yes, it was fatal. And yes, it was Tayveon. So Drequan’s mom still didn’t know, and so the police officer calls a detective and says that they’ll go meet Drequan and his mentor at his mom’s house. 

DREQUAN JACKSON: And I remember as he pulled up to the house, the detective pulled up in front of us and a police officer behind us and me and my mentor in the same car right in the middle. And I remember my mentor asking me like, ‘Are you gonna get out?’ I was like, ‘Y’know, I think I just need to sit here for a little bit, you know?’

JESSE EUBANKS: So Drequan’s sitting in the car. He’s in shock. It’s the middle of the night. He’s totally fatigued. He waits in the car while everyone else gets out to go tell his mom. And as he was telling me this story, Drequan says that he remembers it just like it was a scene from a movie.

DREQUAN JACKSON: And he walks up — the detective, my mentor, and the police officer walked up — this little like driveway at the same time. Y’know, they walk up the steps at the same time, they make it to the door at the same time. So he knocks on the door and I can see when my mom opened the door and I see the police officers say, y’ know, ‘Miss Jackson, your son was killed a couple hours ago’ and I could just see my mom just drop to the ground. So I remember just running up to the door and, y’ know, they had carried my mom to the couch and, y’know, I hugged her, y’know. Y’know, and we both cried, and yeah.

JESSE EUBANKS: And so after Tayveon died, they had a funeral for him.

DREQUAN JACKSON: I can’t really remember it because I had my eyes closed most of the time. The funeral came and I had my head down the whole time and, y’know, it was the saddest funeral. It’s just like I’d seen him the day before. Yeah. 

JESSE EUBANKS: And Drequan didn’t really know what to do with everything that he’d experienced, like I don’t even, I didn’t even know what to do as he was telling me this story. I’m not sure how to respond, like Drequan is the one who lived through it and even he, he didn’t know how to respond, so he was like ‘I’m just gonna go back to my routine.’

DREQUAN JACKSON: I went to work. That’s how I knew I wasn’t allowing myself to process. I went to work two days after my brother was killed. I went back to work. So that’s how I knew I had a real problem with processing things.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, but how is he supposed to know how to handle this in a healthy way? I mean, you said he’s, what, like 20 at this point? I mean this would be hard for any person to deal with, let alone someone so young.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, I mean it’s sad because there’s actually been studies that show that people in low-income, inner-city neighborhoods experience higher than average rates of trauma. And as a result, conditions such as PTSD can be more common in these neighborhoods because people in these neighborhoods often don’t have the resources to help people navigate through trauma.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so then, but what is a good way to deal with it? Like obviously him going back to work two days after his brother was shot isn’t a healthy thing to do, but what is healthy?

JESSE EUBANKS: Well, to help answer that, I sat down with this guy.

JAMES SANTOS: When we do feel the grief, we, we wanna shut it off. And we shut it off because it’s not making sense in our brains. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Coming up — how to grieve well. We’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL 

JESSE EUBANKS: You’re listening to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Today’s episode — where the gospel meets end of life. 

JESSE EUBANKS: We just heard the story of Drequan and the sudden loss of his brother, and with loss comes grief. But what is grief, and how should we handle it? 

JAMES SANTOS: Grief in itself, it’s pretty complex. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So this is James Santos. He’s a corporate chaplain, so he spends his days walking alongside people who are experiencing loss and grief.

JAMES SANTOS: The primary role, I think of sadness, grief, or loss, it’s a signal to say to slow down. It’s to help us slow down and not speed up and try to like fix it or get over it.

JESSE EUBANKS: So I asked James, y’know — what does it look like for someone to grieve well?

JAMES SANTOS: There’s the basic five stages of grief, y’ know, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay yeah, I’ve heard grief referred to before as like stages you go through. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Right. Like if you google “how to grieve,” y’know, these five stages are gonna come up. But James says actually that’s not a good way to look at it.

JAMES SANTOS: I think stages is kind of a misnomer because grief I think is like a cauldron, a cauldron of emotions. Y’know, when someone grieves, it’s not as clean and sterile. It’s more of a wave, kind of waves. That’s the picture that comes to mind.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and here’s why waves might be better language than stages. So the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — they were developed by psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. So Kubler-Ross works with patients diagnosed with terminal illnesses, and she noticed patterns and similarities in how these patients dealt with the news. And out of that, she developed the five stages.  

RACHEL SZABO: Oh, so these are like stages of grief for someone with a terminal illness. It’s not like a universal grief formula for everyone.

JESSE EUBANKS: Exactly. So you may experience one or more of these things, or you may not. So what can we universally apply to the grieving process? Again, here’s James Santos.

JAMES SANTOS: I have my literation. I said if, if people are telling their stories — so that’s the first T — and tears are present and then time are great ways to see if someone is grieving well. Y’know, some people will say, ‘Well time heals all wounds.’ You’ll hear that. I, I say, well time is part of that, but time in itself does not heal wounds. It’s what they do with their talk or their telling and with their tears, then time will heal all wounds. That’s how I say it. 

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, so he’s got three T’s — time, telling stories, and tears. I like that. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah it’s helpful.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah I think that’s really good because the reality is the way for me to grieve may not be the same way that you’re gonna grieve, like we saw that in the Gospel of John with Martha and Mary. And so I think it would be helpful to also distinguish between types of grief. You know, for instance, Drequan experienced grief that comes after a death has happened, but there’s also grief that can come while there’s still life. So actually, can I share a story with you?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, please. Yeah.

RACHEL SZABO: Okay, yeah. So this is what a guy named Blake Maddux experienced when his wife was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer.

BLAKE MADDUX: I felt it for two years when nobody else did. You know, everybody saw her alive. 

RACHEL SZABO: So this is Blake, and it was right after the birth of their first child that his wife Jenna was diagnosed. And even though at the time of diagnosis Jenna was still alive and could go on to live several more years, Blake says that moment was when the grieving process started for him. 

BLAKE MADDUX: Nobody else felt the effects of her imminent death. I felt the death at the beginning and I felt it every single solitary day. It’s almost an impossibility to know how to, how to react, y’know, without stuffing, and it was impossible ‘cuz I knew that I had life beyond this and I knew she didn’t. 

RACHEL SZABO: So y’know, both Jenna and Blake, they’re people of strong faith and they’re actually a part of our church community. And as soon as the church got news of the diagnosis, everyone started praying for Jenna. Like there was even this hashtag that went around on social media.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah it was #P4J.

RACHEL SZABO: 4J, yeah. Pray for Jenna.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yep. Yeah, I mean it’s natural, like when tragedy comes, y’know, we look at the Scriptures and we see like God intervenes often and so we’re like ‘God, intervene, like do something miraculous.’

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and in a way God did because, y’know, as the cancer took over more and more of her body and Jenna became sicker and sicker, her faith actually grew stronger and stronger. So here’s part of a post that Jenna wrote during that time. 

BLAKE MADDUX: So she said, ‘Several of my friends have shared their one word for 2017, like what the word is gonna be. And I’ve been thinking and praying about what it is I need to be reminded of every day, every moment. The word I keep coming back to is trust, specifically trust in the Lord.’ So she says, ‘I give lip service to the word often, but functionally when it comes to my circumstances, I tend to freak out in fear and anxiety and I know my God has better for me than that.’

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, and like many of us think like that’s what we’re supposed to do. When sorrow or tragedy comes, we’re supposed to accept what God has brought us and not complain. But for Blake, there was this huge gap between how he thought he should feel and how he actually felt.

BLAKE MADDUX: I’ve like seen what it looks like to trust and seeing God provide when I don’t deserve it, but I was just, I was also just, just annoyed at him for making this happen. Y’know, I was just like ‘You put me in a really bad spot ‘cuz like I know my wife is gonna die, I’m not gonna have very long with her, and also I have a newborn that I have to take care of and that I have to plan life out with right now. Like I have life beyond this. Like this is unfair. Y’know, there’s moments I wish I didn’t have a daughter, not because I didn’t want her, but because I would have rather been able just to sit and not have to take care of two people, you know, where I could just sit with my wife and not have to worry about where my daughter’s at.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, and I can appreciate what Blake’s saying here. I can appreciate his honesty. I mean this is the reality of what anybody in his circumstance would feel and think. I mean it’s not pretty. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, somehow we think if we express those things, that makes us a bad Christian. 

JESSE EUBANKS: In fact, James Santos says that there’s actually space for these darker emotions.

JAMES SANTOS: In a time of sadness, I don’t know — that’s where you want to like, y’know, dot your theological i’s and cross your theological t’s. I think there’s a place for that, like way down the road. But you know, at the moment when someone is being raw with their emotions, I think God invites these pre-reflective outbursts.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, I mean I think if you look at the book of Psalms — I mean it’s full of pre-reflective outbursts.

RACHEL SZABO: Oh totally.

JESSE EUBANKS: I mean there’s all these moments in there where it’s very clear that the Psalmist is just like ‘I’m not worried about correct theology right now, like I am just giving it all to God. I’m living totally, transparently, vulnerably before God. 

RACHEL SZABO: Hm-mm.

JAMES SANTOS: I think people can have this more performance, y’know, orientation with grief. And I think if you try to put pressure on how and performance in grief, it typically doesn’t bode well.

RACHEL SZABO: Eventually, all the medications that Jenna was taking and the treatments that she was getting, they made her functionally like a zombie. Like she was asleep more hours than she was awake, and it was very clear, like, the end is coming.

BLAKE MADDUX: It was like an old person nearing the end, y’know? You just go downhill. Your body starts shutting down. 

RACHEL SZABO: And so, knowing that the end was coming, Blake and the rest of Jenna’s family wanted to have one last time to spend together as a family. So they rented a beach house in South Carolina. They were gonna spend a week hanging out together near the beach. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Oh that’s great. Like so was it a good experience?

RACHEL SZABO: Well actually, just a couple days in, Jenna declined so rapidly that she needed to be rushed to a hospital to be put in hospice care. So Blake made an arrangement to get Jenna on an emergency flight back home to get her into the hospital and he would drive back with their daughter in the car. But when he was on the road driving back, he got a phone call from the doctors. Jenna had made it to the hospital, but she was in so much pain that they wanted to put her in a medically induced coma. 

BLAKE MADDUX: And that she’ll probably never wake up from again. Y’know, so I had to make that choice being away from her. 

RACHEL SZABO: So by the time Blake made it to the hospital, Jenna was already in the coma. And not long after that, she passed away.

BLAKE MADDUX: And so I, I just never got a, like never got like the proper goodbye, y’know. Her dying wasn’t the hardest part. That was the hardest part. I have a — I like saved it on my computer, on the desktop — this picture that I have. It’s a live photo of her walking away. And uh, I don’t know, I’ve just sat and watched it and watched it. It’s funny, in the picture, she’s smiling. But then you like, it’s a live photo. So you, so hold down on it and you get to see, she just like put that smile up just for the picture and really like she’s in like just tremendous amount of pain. Like she just looks miserable, and it’s just heartbreaking. Yeah. So that’s, that’s like, I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t even have words for it. It’s just hard. Just hard. 

JESSE EUBANKS: You know, it’s interesting, with both Drequan and Blake, there’s this moment in our conversations with both of them where they just run out of words. There just aren’t enough words to describe what’s going on inside of them.

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, I mean the reality is death has a profound impact on us because death isn’t the way that it’s supposed to be. You know, in God’s kingdom, there is not death and loss and grief. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, which begs what might be the most common question regarding end of life — why? I mean why did all this have to happen? Why now? Why like this? Why couldn’t it have been different than this? Y’know, I asked James Santos like how he answers the why question. And he told me this story.

JAMES SANTOS: There was a family I was serving in southern Indiana, and I remembered as I parked and I could see some of the family members, y’know, in my rear view mirror, like just kind of outside and smoking. I was like, aw man — you could just tell from just their faces, like they’d been up all night. So I get out the car, I start heading towards this, this trailer home. And as I was passing them, you could tell they were just kinda like, just exhausted, put out.

JESSE EUBANKS: So James goes inside the home, and the lady he was there to see was in the living room in a hospital bed. She was dying of lung cancer, and she maybe had a week left to live. 

JAMES SANTOS: You know, heard a little bit of her story. And typically when I finish, I’ll say, ‘Hey, would it be appropriate for me to pray?’ and which they allowed me to pray. I step out. And as I was stepping out, the mother of the patient walked towards me and out came the words, ‘Um, chaplain, just want you to answer this question for me. How could a God, a loving God, take my third child away from me?’ 

JESSE EUBANKS: This mother was a mother of three, and she tells James that her other two children had died. They had passed away. So the woman in the hospital bed in the living room was her only living child left, and now that child too was about to die. This mom was about to bury the last of all of her children.

JAMES SANTOS: And this was like a couple of days before like Mother’s Day. And this mom was just like, ‘Why? Can you tell me why?’

JESSE EUBANKS: Y’know, James is a chaplain, and so he has kind of like rehearsed thoughts on what to say when someone asks why. But when he opened his mouth, the answer he gave this mother was not the one that he was expecting.

JAMES SANTOS: Even as I’m saying this, I’m like ‘What’s gonna come out of my mouth?’ ‘Cuz it felt like an out-of-body experience.

JESSE EUBANKS: Stay with us.

COMMERCIAL 

JESSE EUBANKS: Welcome back to the Love Thy Neighborhood podcast. I’m Jesse Eubanks.

RACHEL SZABO: And I’m Rachel Szabo. Today’s episode is where the gospel meets end of life. And with end of life, one of the most common questions we can ask is — why?

JESSE EUBANKS: And that is the question. That’s the question that James Santos gets asked by a mother who’s about to bury the last of her three children. 

JAMES SANTOS: ‘How could a loving God take my third child away from me? Can you tell me why?’

JESSE EUBANKS: But instead of answering her question with his default answer, James suddenly tells the mother this. 

JAMES SANTOS: “I want you to know that as you ask this why question, you’re not the first person to ask the why question. 2000 years ago, y’know, Jesus also asked the why question because he said, ‘My God, my God, why did you forsake me?’” And I said, “You know, your why question is a pretty meaningful one and one, even right now as I’m trying to answer it is, any answer I’m gonna say is gonna be insufficient. But I want you to know that you’re not alone in asking that why question. As a matter of fact, I think that even when Jesus asked his why question 2000 years ago, yours was part of that. And so whatever anger or whatever frustration you may have, I want you to know that it is safe.” And there was just this silence because there was no answer that I could give that would be satisfactory for that mother. That mother needed from this chaplain, “Hey chaplain, can you hear me? Can you like bear this with me? Can you hold space? Will you not judge me? Will you not critique me? Will you not try to correct me, but just kind of hold space for me?” And I think if there’s anything that grief has taught me is there is this unspoken question, “Will you stay with me? Will you identify with me?” 

JESSE EUBANKS: Jesus suffered and died alone so that we never have to. And part of that means because God is always with us, but it also means because he’s brought us into community with one another. As Christians, we have such a unique gift to give when it comes to grief and loss because we don’t need to sugarcoat loss. We can look at it as the truly painful experience that it is, but we also have hope to carry on because we know that loss does not get the final word. 

RACHEL SZABO: Well but what about someone who is not a believer, like someone who dies and we suspect that they did not know Christ? Like is there still hope in that scenario?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah I mean that is, that’s a tough question. So, y’know, the Scriptures testify to the fact that there is a place called heaven and there is a place called hell and we’re told that God will judge the living and the dead, like that there is some kind of judgment that takes place. I’ve done a lot of reading on hell. It’s probably my number one theological quandary that I’ve struggled with. And so, um, Jesus is heartbroken over those that are lost, y’know. It’s not like he’s waving his finger going like ‘You didn’t do what I said.’ Y’know, it’s a sense of — it’s with great grief, y’know. He looks over out over Jerusalem and he’s like ‘How long? Like how long will you be a sheep without a shepherd?’ Like it’s just a brokenness for the fact that we just chase, we chase our own ways, our own ways of doing things. And so God grieves over those that don’t turn to him. And so on this side, y’know, we live with confusion and we live with a sense of uncertainty, but I think that in the end what we can know is this, is that we testify to the belief that God is love, but we don’t pit his mercy against his justice. And so whatever’s gonna happen, it’s gonna be fully just and fully fair and fully loving. And I think it’s probably a little beyond our understanding. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah. And the thing is we don’t need to have, y’know, these profound biblical truths to speak to someone when they’re going through grief or loss. As James Santos said, the unspoken question of grief is — will you stay with me? It’s not — will you comfort me with your words? It’s not — will you speak to me some truth? Although those things are good and we should do those things, but the big question is simply — will you be here? Can I count on your presence? And, actually in fact, it was that kind of presence that made a huge difference for Blake.

So after Jenna’s death, Blake felt a lot of confusion. Y’know, in one sense there was relief and gladness that Jenna wasn’t in pain anymore, that she finished her race and now got to hear her Father say, ‘Well done good and faithful servant’ and rest. But on the other hand, y’know, Blake had spent the past six years of his life devoted to and around a person that was no longer there with him. 

BLAKE MADDUX: It was a new life, y’know. Life restarted. Life restarted with this weight of pain and stress, but it restarted though, y’know?

RACHEL SZABO: And honestly for Blake there was some sense in which he didn’t know who he was anymore. Y’know, who was he supposed to be now in this new life where it was just him and his daughter? And on top of that, y’know, the whole church had been praying for Jenna and knew about their situation. And so in this weird way, Blake had kinda become famous among the church community. 

BLAKE MADDUX: I was so exposed for so long, y’know, like ‘How are you doing? How are you feeling? Your wife is about to die.’ So it’s just like I was so exposed, so, so vulnerable, that I really needed shelter and I just found shelter in creating my own persona of who I was and who I wanted to be. I shaved my head, shaved my face. I needed to look in the mirror and see a different person. Y’know, got more tattoos. I bought my dream truck, y’know, big old truck, and dumped a bunch of money into it.

JESSE EUBANKS: I mean this almost sounds like a mid-life crisis, I mean honestly a little bit like he’s going off the rails. 

RACHEL SZABO: Yeah, I mean there is a real sense in which grappling with his wife’s death stripped Blake down to his core.

BLAKE MADDUX: I threw away religion. The only thing I ever held onto was that, was a knowing that God existed. I just let it, just let it all go.

RACHEL SZABO: Blake stopped going to church for a while, and not like a while as in for a month. Like he stopped going to church for over a year.

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, y’know, and it’s not like I wanna sit here and go like ‘Oh, I recommend doing that,’ but the truth is like it’s a relationship and sometimes, y’know, in life like we just wrestle with God for long periods of time. It doesn’t mean that the relationship is done. That’s just the truth of a real relationship. 

RACHEL SZABO: You know, I asked Blake what was helpful to him in those early months after Jenna’s death, and he pointed to some of his pastors and some counselors that were walking with him through that time. But actually the people he talked about the most were his next-door neighbors.

BLAKE MADDUX: I mean, they were just constant, you know, just especially the first six months or for a first nine months when it was like real hard. We’d go sit on the front porch and smoke cigarettes and drink beer and just hang and they would listen to me just talk about my crazy ideas of life or what I’ve learned.

RACHEL SZABO: So Blake’s neighbors were actually Christians, and their goal wasn’t to correct him, although there were times when they reminded him of what is true. But they just wanted to be a presence for him in this stormy season of life. 

JESSE EUBANKS: It reminds me of this word that I heard years ago and I think actually it’s a really wonderful word and it’s also a sign that sometimes like our English language fails us. So it’s an Ethiopian Amharic word, and the word is ozonolu. And ozonolu means ‘I bodily grieve with you,’ like ‘what you are feeling, I feel it in my bones. I’m entering into deep grief with you.’ Not just offering condolences, but to enter into someone else’s pain by experiencing their pain yourself. And I think as a community, when someone is grieving and they’ve really suffered something, they don’t need just condolences. They need us to enter into that grief and pain with them. And according to James Santos, our presence is actually the best gift that we can give to somebody who’s grieving.

JAMES SANTOS: I don’t think you have to have a degree or training or certification. I think if you come just as you are with a caring, loving, empathetic heart and show up — man, that does wonders for people. 

RACHEL SZABO: So today, Blake is back in church. He actually got remarried recently. And I wouldn’t say that his grieving process is over, but through his tears, through telling Jenna’s story, and with time, Blake is starting to heal. 

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, y’know, in thinking about the power of presence and how much that has helped Blake and here’s James Santos talking about it, y’know, thinking about Drequan, Dre has said that the presence of people that love him is actually the thing that’s helped him the most too. 

Y’know, sometimes for us to really process things in life, we need a change in our environment. And for Drequan, he needed to get out of his neighborhood. He needed to get into a new community out of his survival mode and slow down some so that he could grieve all this loss that he had experienced. So Drequan actually came to do Love Thy Neighborhood. 

DREQUAN JACKSON: So like first couple of weeks, I still could see myself still isolating myself, still being to myself, not really being intentional. 

JESSE EUBANKS: But eventually Drequan goes on to see that community’s exactly what he needed.

DREQUAN JACKSON: So I remember having this phone call with my mom and she was just grieving, y’know, and I felt so heavy after that conversation and felt like the Lord was like, ‘Now is the time.’ Because I was trying to be so strong, I was trying not to let people I just met see my emotions to the point where I’m trying to hold in every tear that I can. I was just like I couldn’t. Y’know, so I go in the room — all my roommates in one room — and I go in the room and I just asked them to sit down with me. I just started just sharing how I felt, sharing my emotions, and I just started bawling, like, like I wept. And they were just so encouraging, very encouraging. They prayed for me. And it’s crazy because I didn’t even know I needed a community, you know? But he showed me ‘you need these people,’ y’know, like ‘you need people.’

JESSE EUBANKS: And y’know, being with people in their grief, it’s not like a one and done thing. Y’know, it’s for the long haul. Because the reality is like Drequan is still experiencing grief. Y’know we changed the name of his brother, and that’s for privacy reasons because his death at the dollar store — it’s still an open case. And even now, over a year later, his family is still trying to get clear answers as to what exactly happened that night. 

DREQUAN JACKSON: We still haven’t seen a video. No video has been shown, y’know, it’s just like no justice. Like he just died. Just another human being that was killed with no one trying to justify it, y’know? So that’s been really hard.

JESSE EUBANKS: So there’s the hardship of losing his brother, but there’s the ongoing hardship too of having so many unanswered questions. It’s like how do you close this chapter of life when you still have so many unanswered questions? 

RACHEL SZABO: So, way back at the beginning of the episode, you told the story about a guy named John Drage, who has terminal brain cancer. And I was just wondering, y’know, how is he doing now?

JESSE EUBANKS: Yeah, y’know, the last time that I saw John, it was a little bit striking because, y’know, as I said, like John was this guy that was like, y’know, would do all these incredible competitions on the weekend. And this last time that I saw John, like his frame was smaller. So he went from looking more like a bodybuilder to more like a cyclist, y’know. He did say that he’s working less now, but even though he’s working less in his career, he actually still has a lot of stuff to do. 

JOHN DRAGE: Y’know, we’re with the financial advisor. I’ve gotta get the will done. We’ve gotta go talk to the social security people. All that crap has to happen. 

JESSE EUBANKS: So I asked John if there was anything he wanted to make sure he did while he was still alive. And I meant it in sort of like a “bucket list” sort of way. But what’s amazing is that as he answered, it became apparent he wants to use the last days of his life to show love to those around him.

JOHN DRAGE: Here’s what I have to do. My kids are 25, 23, 22, and 20. They need dad to give them a blessing before he leaves. That blessing’s going to come in something written,  it’s probably going to come in something spoken that I’m gonna hopefully in a live way get to say, and it’s probably going to come in something that I do in a video. I’m probably going to miss my younger son’s wedding. He doesn’t even have a girlfriend right now, not gonna get to meet their kids. He needs to hear that dad loves him and dad thinks he’s got what it takes. And even though I may not get to tell him I love him when he gets married, I’m going to say it beforehand. I am given the gift of all this time. I mean, you know, it sounds arrogant, but if we build our life on the Rock, when the storms come it doesn’t kill us. You know, Matthew 7, right, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount — if we build our life on the rock, the storms come but our house will not crash. But if we built our life on the sand — and so this relationship with God that I’ve built, which has come out in loving people, has been really sweet. And I’m really blessed. 

JESSE EUBANKS: When we read about the story of Lazarus in the Gospel of John, it’s a bit spoiled for us because we know what’s going to happen. And Jesus himself knew that in just a few minutes, he would bring Lazarus out of the grave. And yet, after speaking with Martha and Mary, the Bible tells us he became indignant. I mean that means that he was angry. And then it says that he was troubled. And then, he weeps. Even knowing the end of the story, Jesus takes the time to feel these waves of grief. It is right and human to allow ourselves to feel the full weight of death and loss. Because after we do, we then get to experience the joy of Jesus shouting ‘Lazarus, come out.’

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JESSE EUBANKS: If you’d like more resources on this topic or to hear past episodes of this podcast, visit our website at lovethyneighborhood.org/LTNpodcast.

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JESSE EUBANKS: Special thanks to our interviewees for this episode — John Drage, Drequan Jackson, James Santos, and Blake Maddux.

RACHEL SZABO: Our senior producer and host is Jesse Eubanks.

JESSE EUBANKS: Our co-host today is Rachel Szabo, who’s also our producer, technical director, editor, and winner of this year’s Halloween costume contest.

RACHEL SZABO: Additional editing by Resonate Recordings.

JESSE EUBANKS: Music for today’s episode comes from Lee Rosevere, Podington Bear, and Blue Dot Sessions. Theme music and commercial music by Murphy DX.

RACHEL SZABO: Apply for your social justice internship supported by Christian community by visiting lovethyneighborhood.org. Serve for a summer or a year. Grow in your faith and life skills.

JESSE EUBANKS: Which of these was a neighbor to the man in need? The one who showed mercy. Jesus tells us, ‘Go, and do likewise.’