death is a thief in the night

Death is like a thief in the night not just because it is sudden and unexpected but also because it robs us of the things we value, of things so precious to us.  Death is like a thief not just because it comes as a surprise but especially because it gives one feelings of regret and should have – I should have stayed longer, I should have closed the window.  Death is like a thief, we do not know the day or the hours and we heard this all our lives but we always end up saying, I did not see it coming.  Death is like a thief - the comparison is just so appropriate, isn’t it?

But I also believe that the comparison is inappropriate or should I say we have pulled it too far.  Jesus was simply referring to the suddenness of the coming, perhaps he was also referring to the speed of its execution, daw nagmisok ka lang, wala na wallet mo, or perhaps still Jesus was referring to its unexpected and unforeseen characteristic.  But I am sure that the one who came did not come to rob us, the one who came did not come to deprive us of something precious, the one who came did not come to unduly take away what is only ours.  I would even like to believe that the one who was taken away from us wanted to be taken away from us.  After more or less a month of stay in the hospital she would tell everyone how eager she was to go home prepared especially for her with her needs and conveniences and even with her preferences in mind.  In fact on her supposedly last day before coming home she already invited everyone to come to a party that would celebrate her coming home together with Powie’s birthday.  She was so confident in inviting everyone including the nurses, probably thinking that she had a son for a caterer and 16 pigs at her disposal.

At that night she did come home.  But it was not the home we prepared for.  It was not the home we imagined it to be.  Nevertheless it is home, she is home.

Were we robbed?  Did the thief come to take away something precious from us?  There is a song entitled “Steal away to Jesus.”  It is a negro spiritual, a song composed in the 1800s by negro slaves who wanted to run away from the yoke of slavery.  The lyrics says - Steal away, steal away to Jesus, steal away home, I haven't got long to stay here.

My mother always prayed that she be spared the enslavement of tubes and oxygen and the bed and the wheel chair and the osterized food – a cell, a jail we wanted her, a cell we built for her to stay in for the rest of her life.  But Jesus was good to her, Jesus is always better even than her well-meaning children.  And so she stole away to Jesus, she stole away home, she didn’t got long to stay here.