There are echoes of this need to "shoulder the burden alone" which many people feel they have to do even when death is approaching as I alluded to in my earlier post.
These are the times when we need people most and yet by and large we treat people as lepers when they are in both situations. Death and the approach of death are something that we dare not contemplate because it is something we are no longer in close contact with. We have sanitised it to the point where it is the great unspeakable, the elephant in the room.
Yet what are we so afraid of? Death will come to us all great or small, the mightly and the ordinary - it is the great leveller.
The sad truth in most of this, is that the vast majoirty of people today have lost their Faith in this increasingly secular oriented society and with this has come an increasing fear of death and dying. This is not just a Christian phenomonen either, I have a number of Muslim friends who bemoan the lack of faith in their children as they absorb western values.
This week saw the day on which we remember the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, who when his sight was restored is reported to have had the "scales removed from his eyes". Perhaps we need the scales removing from our eyes too - to be able to see that death has been conquered and should no longer be feared and that the dying and those around them need the love and comfort of those they have loved before they set out on the next chapter of their existence.
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