Why thinking about dying is a gift.

An update.

Randall and Sharon, dancing on the labryinth before church in Memphis, years ago. They both taught me so much about joy, love, living and dying. The text is a poem by Mark Nepo, a favorite of both Randall and Sharon’s.

My friend Randall died Sunday morning.

As you might remember from when I first wrote about Randall and his wonderful wife, Sharon, he had known he was dying for quite a while. (An excerpt from my column about them, written exactly a year ago, is below.)

I met Randall and Sharon as part of the work they were doing in Memphis to recover and reclaim truthful stories of racial terror lynchings in this part of the world. Their passion for the Lynching Sites Project was incandescent — Randall knew the healing that could be found in telling even the most difficult truths, and he and Sharon and I talked a lot about why those conversations are so hard and how to think about having them anyway.

Speaking of hard truths, Randall and Sharon never backed away from them, and their steadfast faith informed everything they did. Though there was also so much joy and fun and love, too, which you can see in the marvelous picture of them dancing together, above.

Here’s how Sharon shared the news:

He is free and had the loveliest, peaceful passing. I was with him and we had our morning prayers and poetry time at his bedside. I phoned Andrew and held the phone to Randall’s ear. Two breaths after his goodbye, he simply stopped his long journey home and followed God’s breath back to the heart of love from whence he came. Thanks be to the Big Love that holds us all!

Thanks be to God for both Randall and Sharon.

Randall and Sharon and Mt. Rainier, not long after they moved West

I never knew Randall before he had the devastating cancer that took his voice; I’ve never known him when death wasn’t stalking him. But when I met Randall and his wife Sharon, they were both so full of joy and curiosity and love that cancer wasn’t ever really part of our conversations.

They moved several years ago to be closer to family and friends on the West Coast and since then, Randall has gone into hospice care. He occasionally writes wonderful notes on his CaringBridge site. Yet whenever I see an email notification about one, I think, Uh-oh.

I wish I didn’t have that first reaction; I know that’s not what Randall would want. His notes are always warm, insightful and, well, life-affirming.

The most recent one reports that “dying is going well,” a funny reaction to a note Randall and Sharon received from a goddaughter whose opening line was, “I hope dying is going well.”

As Randall says, “She is learning to accept that death is a part of life!”

Oh, right. It’s so difficult to remember that, even when you have seen death up close.

I was particularly struck in this note by Randall’s humility and willingness to acknowledge the ambiguous middle places: “One doctor estimated that I would not live past December 2023, but I am still here. I don’t feel proud that I proved her wrong, because no one really knows.”

Randall is grateful for all the attention and help he receives: from Sharon, from the hospice nurse, and from the many prayer and meditation groups they belong to, both online and in-person. “With a lot of support,” he says, “I am dying in a style that is mine, which primarily means I am not doing it alone.”

Think about that for a minute. Isn’t not being alone really the whole point of living, not to mention dying?

So as I think about my friends who have shared these intimate journeys with me, I’ll try to focus on what they’ve taught me.

Stay present. Connect as much as possible. Embrace hope and joy.

As the spiritual leader, teacher and author Ram Dass said, “We are all just walking each other home.”