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(An Easter Story)

He hadn't expected to be doing this already. No one expects to be burying his wife at 29 years old. But here was Kent, driving to Topeka to get a burial certificate.

Kent's wife Joy had just delivered her third boy in April of 1998. In December of that year, Joy Nowlin was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. By January 2000, barely a year later, she was dead. She left a precious husband and 3 young boys: 18-month-old Joel, 3-year-old Jeremiah, and five-year-old Noah.

And now, Kent was preparing to give Joy the last gift he could give her—a personal goodbye.

Kent was an established dentist, and could have certainly afforded a beautiful casket. But that's not how he wanted to say goodbye. He didn't want the intimate pain of her death to be masked over by tufted satin or camouflaged by green outdoor carpet. Death is not so scary that we can't deal with it ourselves.

So when Joy slipped away to her heavenly home on January 10, 2000, Kent knew that he didn't have much time. He laid Joy's body on the cool floor of the basement, and got in the car. If a body is not going to be embalmed, it has to be buried within 24 hours. And since funeral homes are generally unhelpful if you aren't using their services, Kent had to drive from Leavenworth to Topeka for a permit to take the body out of state so Joy could be buried in Missouri. He also struggled to come up with the concrete vault in which a body must legally be buried, but he eventually found a wholesaler that made one available.

On January 11, 2000, a small group of family gathered at the cemetery in Carl Junction, Missouri to say their last goodbyes to Joy Nowlin. Husband Kent, Joy's Dad, and brother-in-law Mike carried her body from the back of the Suburban. Kent went down into the vault so he could receive Joy's body as Dad and Mike lowered her down. Then Kent kissed her, and placed a rose on her pajama clad chest. Aunt Tara had to hold back little Noah and little Jeremiah who also wanted to join their Mom in the vault to say goodbye.

After the crane put the lid on the vault, Kent, and Dad, and Mike started shoveling the dirt that would cover the resting place of Joy Nowlin's body—for a while.

Kent wanted to handle Joy's death himself, but not all by himself. He was able to give Joy the gift of a personal goodbye because he knew that it wasn't really goodbye. His last gift to her was made possible by Christ's last gift to us while he was on the earth.

"But I do not want you to be ignorant, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Therefore comfort one another with these words."

[The italics is I Thessalonians 4:13-18, The Modern Translation]

"Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life" from Tom Kelley

The Curse is Gone