Last week I saw a post on Facebook I didn’t want to read. Our friend, Kathy Meyer, one of the first people we met in Elgin was not expected to live through the week. I quickly called Simon to see if he thought since I was in Deerfield I should just go to Hyde Park. We decided no, that we would go together later in the week. We had time. I was tired and didn’t want to drive through Hyde Park alone at night. I talked to Sarah and said, “I want more time with Kathy but I am not going to pray for a miracle here. That would be selfish. Kathy was ready to die and she wanted to sit at the foot of Jesus. She was so sure that is where she would be.”

By the time I got home that night, Kathy was gone.

I spend a lot of time talking to people, Jews and non-Jews about life-after-death. Jews seem less sure than Christians. We have a concept of olam ha’bah, the world-to-come, and yet we believe that the reward is in this life. We have a concept of hell—sometimes we use the word gehenna or she’ol. It is maybe the separation from G-d. We may have a concept of purgatory and that is why Jews recite Kaddish for a parent only for 11 months and not 12. We don’t want to think that the soul of our very own parent might hang in the balance, in suspension for the full twelve months. I don’t have clear answers to give people. I wish I did. It would be simpler. Easier.

And yet, I don’t think that life just ends.

Kathy was a remarkable woman. She cheated death more times than most can count. She has been on oxygen since before we knew her. Yet she was active. She walked Wyatt, their golden retriever, part of the reason we have a dog! Then she walked Wyatt and Walter. She was so active in her church—running their missions program, one of their Sunday School programs and doing a teaching on human trafficking. She loved coming to our house for Passover and she attended one Java and Jews and one Shabbat evening service. She was always curious. She was always learning. She loved to cook and to play games on Saturday nights. And she loved her family. Her goal was to get well enough to visit her newest granddaughter in Vancouver, WA just three weeks ago. And she did. She talked about her husband Mike, her daughters, her son and those two grandchildren constantly. And her G-d.

We could learn a lot from Kathy, in how she lived with passion and in how she died. Living fully, courageously. Beating the odds over and over again. Never quitting. Never (at least with us) being bitter.

One of my last conversations with her was about a family member that she described as a secular Jew. They just didn’t seem interested in faith or G-d or prayer and she wished for them the richness she had in her church. I talked to her about the book that Henri Nouwen wrote to his secular Jewish friend, Life of the Beloved. She was going to borrow my copy. I just ordered one for Mike, her husband, to give away.

The funeral was today. Sandwiched between my Java and Jews programs at three separate coffee shops. There was singing. There was story telling. There were tears and laughter. There were prayers. And the acknowledgement that sometimes our prayers don’t work. We all wanted more time with Kathy. There was a recognition that the human race has decided that death is the enemy. But death is not the end.

In the end, like Jewish funerals, there was food. Even deviled eggs. (or angel eggs, just ask me) And those eggs made me smile. Life is a circle, an egg. And Kathy lived hers so very, very fully. Perhaps our prayers, spoken and unspoken were answered.