First experience with death

Saturday evening I had my first real, first-hand experience with death. There was a accident up at the church we rent from and a car hit one of the rock pillars at the corners of the parking lot. The car and the fragments of the pillar went about thirty feet. The car had locked its brakes up and slid sideways into the pillar. I was lying in bed just dozing off when I heard the brakes lock up and the hit. I wasn't sure what I'd heard. I got up, dressed, grabbed a flashlight and headed up the driveway to see what had happened and if I could help at all.
Upon reaching the car I saw the driver still in the car, seemingly unconscious. A female passenger was roaming about the scene hysterically. Another guy and girl had just beat me to the scene; they were playing in the backyard of the subdivision behind us when they heard the wreck and drove over. They both worked in a hospital nearby so had training and experience (though I didn't know that until later). The female passenger had cuts all over her arms and said she had crawled out of the passenger side window. The guy had checked the driver's pulse and found nothing. He and I yanked at the passenger side door to get it open and he tried to pull him free but he was stuck. I helped as much as I could and we all came to the realization that this young man was already dead. No CPR was going to help, even if we could get him free of the wreckage. The rock pillar had hit on his side and the indentation from the impact was a good two feet into the side of the car.
911 had been called and I did my best to talk them to the exact location. As they approached we settled into the background and I began to reflect on what I'd just witnessed. I had been holding, touching, pulling, and pushing on a man who had been alive just moments before. I was looking at the reality of death. I began to try to play the events from his perspective in my mind. I could not imagine how he felt. Locking the brakes meant he must have been somewhat aware of the situation, even if he was too late. There were broken beer bottles all over the scene and a busted cooler in the back. I can't be sure that alcohol was involved but it certainly seemed likely.
All too often we think of death in a very abstract sort of way. Many of us have had family members die; grandparents and other relatives. Perhaps we have even had parents die. But this was not abstract death. This was not death as it is presented in a funeral home or a visitation service. This was 3 minutes ago living and breathing death. I began to consider how true it is that life is fragile. Other than funerals and visitations, my experience with death was limited to television, movies, and books. They were no substitute for the feelings I had about this event. Looking at a dead man helped me understand some of what the books I read were trying to get across to me. This past year my juniors read All Quiet on the Western Front and often read about death and all its hideousness. While I academically agreed with and knew what Remarque to be saying about the experience of death was right, I had no real context for it until Saturday night. Saturday night I understood what Paul understood when he took Kat off his shoulder and found him dead. Death is quick.
Of course all this musing would be in vain if it did not have eternal value. Hebrews 9 speaks of the swiftness and finality of death and the coming judgment. Death is just once. Death is final. It is impossible to prepare for death when death is happening. That young man, a 21 year old I later learned, had no time between the moment he locked up his brakes and the moment he died (which was almost certainly instantaneous) to consider eternity or to do business with God.
I considered, most of all, all the times God spared me his fate. I began to see with new eyes the kind of mercy and grace God had shown to me in the years prior to my conversion. I drank and drove home. I sped down dark roads at night. I did stupid things and am here telling all about it. I lived through it. But that has nothing to do with my skill as a driver or anything else in myself. What Saturday night showed me, reminded me, was that God had providentially cared for me and overlooked "the times of ignorance" in me and made me live through my foolishness. It reminded me of God's love for me.