Mourning With Those Who Mourn

I walked in the door of my home last night at 6:30 after a long and tiring day. There was an odd stillness and quiet, the smell of dinner wasn’t in the air. Pam ran to me with tears in her eyes and told me the awful news about a dear friend who had passed away earlier in the afternoon from a massive heart attack. Life has moved along in slow motion ever since.

She was 58 years old. She was one of the healthiest people I’ve ever known. She leaves behind a husband, three children, and five grandchildren. She also leaves behind a grieving community of people lucky enough to be counted as her friends. One of the reasons we grieve is because Kim Davis taught all of us what being a friend really means. Almost a year ago to the day it was Kim who saved our friend Leigh Ann’s life when she found her collapsed at home. It was her calm, quick action that saved her life. For the next month it was Kim who took charge of all of the details of caring for Leigh Ann and her devastated family. It was Kim who poured out every ounce of strength she possessed to make the intolerable tolerable for her best friend. Now, in an irony that is almost impossible to comprehend, this time...it was Leigh Ann who found Kim.

Life is full of disappointments. Each of us must endure news that stings and shocks the system. When one so dear, so vibrant, healthy and full of life dies so suddenly, it serves as a bitter reminder that we all exist on borrowed time. All of us eventually, in the words of Shakespeare, will shuffle off this mortal coil. We accept this fact intellectually but seldom spent a lot of time preparing ourselves for its truth. Most of us prefer to think of death and dying as the province of old age. But, yesterday it came for one of us...and we are heartbroken. Like the apostle Paul, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed...”

Every group of friends needs someone to whom they can point and say, There is what a good person looks like. We all need to know someone who models for the rest of us what it means to be loyal, generous, and kind. We all need living examples of what real Christianity looks like in person rather than merely in theory. Although she would have been the last person to claim any kind of sainthood for herself...for so many of us, Kim Davis was that person.

Her absence will leave a gaping hole in her family’s life. She will be mourned by the friends she leaves behind. But we don’t grieve like those who have no hope. Yes, we mourn. But we also celebrate a life well lived.