On Grampa and grieving

Grampa roasting hotdogs at Kako, the camp in Alaska he built. 

Dave Penz 

(September 8, 1934-May 11, 2014)

My grampa died today. He had had leukemia for a while, but the terrible infection that killed him took us all by surprise. 

This is how I'm feeling: 

Childhood is the Kingdom where Nobody Dies 

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age
The child is grown, and puts away childish things.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

Nobody that matters, that is. Distant relatives of course
Die, whom one never has seen or has seen for an hour,
And they gave one candy in a pink-and-green stripéd bag, or a jack-knife,
And went away, and cannot really be said to have lived at all.

And cats die. They lie on the floor and lash their tails,
And their reticent fur is suddenly all in motion
With fleas that one never knew were there,
Polished and brown, knowing all there is to know,
Trekking off into the living world.
You fetch a shoe-box, but it’s much too small, because she won’t curl up now:
So you find a bigger box, and bury her in the yard, and weep.
But you do not wake up a month from then, two months
A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night
And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say Oh, God! Oh, God!
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,
—mothers and fathers don’t die.

And if you have said, “For heaven’s sake, must you always be kissing a person?”
Or, “I do wish to gracious you’d stop tapping on the window with your thimble!”
Tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow if you’re busy having fun,
Is plenty of time to say, “I’m sorry, mother.”

To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died,
who neither listen nor speak;
Who do not drink their tea, though they always said
Tea was such a comfort.

Run down into the cellar and bring up the last jar of raspberries;
they are not tempted.
Flatter them, ask them what was it they said exactly
That time, to the bishop, or to the overseer, or to Mrs. Mason;
They are not taken in.
Shout at them, get red in the face, rise,
Drag them up out of their chairs by their stiff shoulders and shake
them and yell at them;
They are not startled, they are not even embarrassed; they slide
back into their chairs.

Your tea is cold now.
You drink it standing up,
And leave the house.

  ---------
But I also feel this:  

Psalm 16:2, 5-11

 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
    apart from you I have no good thing.”
Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
    you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    surely I have a delightful inheritance.
I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
    even at night my heart instructs me.
I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
    With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
    my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
    nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
    you will fill me with joy in your presence,
    with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

The airplane graveyard at Kako. I think Grampa crashed at least 2 of these planes. 
Being a bush pilot is no joke. To be honest I always expected him to die in a crash.

Grampa was a missionary, serving in Alaska since 1962. I am very proud of all that he did to create Kako and all the work in villages he did before that. There are many amazing, crazy stories. So many times he could easily have died.

Maybe I'll blog about them sometime. But what I'm thinking right now is how his life was always in God's hands. I am so thankful to be in season of Easter, to be reminded of Christ's conquest of Death.

When I was a camp counselor at Kako back in 2006, this was the passage we were supposed to get the kids in our cabin to memorize (picked because most of them have experienced death, despite their age):
 
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 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."

 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
 

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

 This reality confounds and comforts me. 

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.