When my father, a retired army sergeant, passed away at the age of 79, the army sent a mortality officer to our home. He attended the military funeral and then, over the next several weeks, came to the house and walked my mom through all the required paperwork: getting the death certificates, contacting the army and civil service regarding retirement benefits, dealing with bank accounts and insurance.
In the midst of my mother’s and our family’s grief a sympathetic outsider helped manage all the details of death.
Recently my brother-in-law, a retired Air Force officer, passed away and I called the base nearby. They put us in touch with a ‘casualty officer’ who performed the same services.
As a pastor I have been a ‘mortality officer’ for members of my community at times. I have had to self-educate to figure out paperwork, social security, insurance, retirement, bills owed- the whole gamut of issues that come with death. I am willing to perform those functions and try to see it as a way of being present.
But as pastor my call is to be available for spiritual and emotional support.
I say all of this to name a need in our culture. We have sanitized death to the point where it is an alien event to many, many people. Some are hesitant to write wills because of a superstitious fear that we are inviting death. Widows or widowers are confronted with the possibility of losing the family home. How to probate a will. How to deal with the issue of no will.
We sanitize death and shut it away. Out of sight out and out of mind. And then when death touches our lives, we are at a loss. Especially the unchurched, I would imagine. And everyone, whether they belong to a church or not, deserves support in the trying time of the death of a loved one.
Here is my thanksgiving: that the military takes such good care of its own.
Here is the question I am left with: how can we, as a people, provide ‘mortality officers’ for everyone?
Are you ever right!