I started watching the show Dance Academy a couple of months ago when I went on a major dancing kick. I missed dancing and I wished I could be dancing, but my work schedule won't allow me to take dance classes until the fall. So I started gobbling up every dance show I could find. So You Think You Can Dance. Breaking Pointe. Even Bunheads. And then I stumbled across Dance Academy one day on Netflix.
The show was alright. Somewhat cheesy and a bit ridiculous at moments, but the atmosphere of the show was generally lighthearted and fun and the dancing was good, and that's all I really cared about.
So how the heck did I wind up sitting on my couch, sobbing over this lighthearted and fun show about dancing?
In the third to final episode of the second season (which just finished; season 3 will apparently be in the works soon), the unexpected happens. One morning, on his normal run, the day of a giant dance competition, one of the main characters gets hit by a car and dies on the way to the hospital.
Everyone's world immediately turns upside down.
It's the unthinkable. The thing that happens in an instant and you have to stop and ask yourself, "Wait...is this actually real?"
I tend to get emotionally attached to characters in TV shows, movies, and books. Occasionally, I have rather volatile reactions. When Dobby died in Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, I cried without shame. I had to stop and think to myself, "Wait...did that actually happen? No. It couldn't have. They can't be dead. Why would the author/screenwriter do that?" But they did and it did and those characters that I have come to love are suddenly gone in an instant.
And this got me thinking about death and its manifestation in my own life, particularly in light of the recent Colorado shootings.
Life can literally end in a moment. In a second, a person can cross from life to death without any prior warning. And that's scary.
I've never known someone young to die. And by young I mean young, like...25 or younger. I have known young adults -- in their 40s and 50s to die -- but I have never known someone my age or younger to die. I didn't know anyone at Columbine. I didn't know anyone at Virginia Tech. I didn't know anyone in Aurora. And so, in many respects, I have never come face to face with the reality of death long before we feel it's warranted.
The grieving process is different for that kind of death. When a loved one dies, there is always a sense of grief, but if that loved one is older or that death was in any way expected, the grief is different. You've been preparing for the grief for a long time.
But when someone dies unexpectedly -- especially someone young -- it shocks us to our very core. Our souls cry out against the inhumanity and then, in the quiet of the aftermath, the grieving begins. It's only then that the reality of the death begins to hit you and the pain comes.
I've never been one who's thought much about death and dying, simply because, unlike many of my friends, it hasn't happened a lot in my life. Of my relatives I've only lost three -- my great-grandfather, and both of my dad's parents. The other three funerals I remember attending were ones that seemed wrong, out of place. They were all fathers, wonderful men of God, and all young. Two of them died from terminal illnesses (leukemia and liver cancer) and the third from a heart attack.
When I've thought about death off and on over the years, I've had different reactions.
When I was little, it scared me. A lot. Because even though I had accepted Christ as my Savior and knew I was going to heaven, death was still this dark, black, scary thing that was to be feared.
As I grew older, I realized that death didn't need to be feared at all because Christ conquered it to save me from sin and myself. He saved me from my punishment for sin, and for that I am so grateful.
When I think about death now, I have a mixed bag of feelings.
There's the human, sinful part of me that thinks, "But I want to get married" or "I want to have kids" or "I want to do x, y, and z" before I die. It's so easy for me to forget that even though most of my desires (like marriage and children) are good gifts given to us by a good and loving God, they will never, ever compare to the infinite joy of being in the presence of my Savior forever.
And then I stop.
Forever. Forever. Forever. FOR-EEEEEE-VER.
That's a really long time. Like...a reeeeeeally long time.
Thinking about eternity, about forever, scares me. It makes my head hurt. I don't want to think about it. Because for me, everything up until has had a start and an end. Work, school, what have you. It's all had an end. Sometimes it's an end I chose for myself and sometimes it's just an end because it's an end. But eternity has no end. It just keeps going. And going. And going.
But I'm glad that I can find peace in the fact that even though eternity kind of scares me because it's eternal, I don't have to be afraid of what will come in eternity. I don't have to be afraid of the unexpected happening because I know where I'm going and I know who holds my future. So even though the unexpected is scary, and no one ever wants to think about losing a loved one without any warning, my heart finds rest in the fact that even if my friends and family don't get to say goodbye, they know where I'm going and they know I'll be preparing a fantastic welcoming party for them all.