My dad died last October. After growing up and starting his pastoral career in Los Angeles, California, the pastorate had taken our family north for ten-year segments in small-town Northern California, then Oregon, then Washington. But in his final years, he and mom had moved back to retire in LA; he always seemed to think that was where the action was.
Yet his sickness unto death happened away from home, in my home city of San Jose. Mom and dad had come up for a visit as my sister and her family flew in from Virginia, but a strange, strong stomach pain kept dad from participating. He went to the hospital, and doctors discovered a serious ulcer, which required major surgery. Dad was not a healthy person in general, with a history of heart and other troubles, and being stuck in the hospital dropped him onto a slide down into physical and mental disarray. Sometimes he was just sleeping and breathing, with great labor, through a tube. Other times he suffered from “ICU Delirium,” a temporary cognitive disconnect from reality common in older hospitalized patients.
For more than a month he was stuck in the hospital in San Jose, which meant that mom was stuck away from her home too to care for him. This was during the last gasp of the COVID lockdown, when medical facilities were still holding onto restrictions, so coordinating visits among my mom and the rest of my family was always complicated. But we all did our best, including dad. He improved enough to transfer to rehab, and then finally to travel back to a facility in LA so that mom could go home.
He seemed to have turned a corner. So my wife and I kept our plan to travel to Thailand with two of our teammates, Jezrael and Katherine Gandara, and their young son Elias. (Katherine’s one of the contributors to the Mothering in Ministry project in this issue.) We had a wonderful time. The Gandaras had gone to explore whether God was calling them to Bangkok, and they experienced more joy and comfort there than we’d let ourselves hope. We checked in regularly with my mom from across the ocean, and everything seemed to continue progressing.
Until suddenly it wasn’t. We got the call from mom late in the evening in Thailand, which was early in the morning in LA – dad’s heart had stopped in the night, and they’d been unable to revive him. My wife and I cut our trip short to hurry back. The Gandaras stayed to continue discerning their call.
LA, the City of Angels, ended up hosting both my dad’s birth and death. For him, that was where the action was. Thailand, the Land of Smiles, was where we heard of his death and where God birthed a move in the Gandaras’ life. Now, they’re visiting Thailand again, and Katherine’s pregnant with their second child.
Birth and death. The two truly universal experiences of humanity. Each a profound mystery, yet also a shared preoccupation across all places, times, and peoples. Enjoy these reflections on the beginnings and endings of life.
Photo by Elijah Leftridge
Andy Singleterry co-leads the Servant Partners site in San Jose, California and is Editor of SP Press.