My parents

Both of my parents died in the past year, and I couldn’t be happier!

Don’t get me wrong. I love my parents very much. No, they weren’t perfect. Who is? But I could not have asked for better parents. I consider myself blessed in that way.

As much as I love them, I am also very happy that they died.

You see, my parents lived a full lifespan. They died at the ripe old age of 90 (my father) and 85 (my mother). They died within nine months of each other, having been happily married for over sixty years. Together they devoted their lives to the things they loved and believed in, the greatest of which was their shared religious faith, and not the least of which was raising eight children.

At my father’s funeral I was smiling and laughing and greeting family and old friends. Then I realized, there are people grieving here. So I toned it down for their sake.

But for me, despite all I’ve learned about the process of grieving, I still can’t figure out what to be sad about. Months later, it still hasn’t “hit me.” Though there are always many different emotions when someone we love dies, what I feel the most about my parents’ deaths is a sense of happiness and even joy. They had a good life. I had plenty of time to bid them farewell from this earthly plane as their physical bodies gradually wore out in their final years.

By the time my parents died, they were very much looking forward to death. They were tired of struggling with failing bodies and deteriorating minds. Toward the end of his life my father had sage advice for anyone who would listen: “Don’t get old.” Both my father and my mother were eager to move on.

For my parents, death was a joyful thing—an event to be celebrated!

For more on the joy of death and the fear of death, please click here to read on.