The View from a Hearse

By Joseph Bayly and R. C. Sproul Jr.

Three of Joseph Bayly's seven children died at young ages. He was intimately acquainted with the pain of death and was all too familiar with what he once called this enemy's "grim violence." But he was even more intimately acquainted with the One who conquered that enemy forever.

The View from a Hearse is

• Language: English
• Publisher: Warhorn Media
• Release date: Oct 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781940017051

Joseph Bayly

Joseph Bayly and his wife Heidi have five children. After planting Clearnote Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, Joseph and Heidi moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where they are working to plant Christ Church. Joseph has his BA from Vanderbilt University and his BDiv from Clearnote Pastors College.

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To the memory

of three sons

DANNY, JOHN, and JOE

who introduced us

to death

—its tragedy, its glory

Contents

Foreword, by R. C. Sproul Jr.

Editor’s Preface

The View from a Hearse

Prologue

1. Death’s True Colors

2. To Face Death

3. Styles of Dying Change

4. What Is Dying Like?

5. People Used to Die at Home

6. Understanding and Responding to the Dying Person

7. The Management of Grief

8. How Do You Comfort?

9. Explaining Death to a Child

10. When a Child Dies

11. Suicide

12. Prayer and Terminal Illness

13. Our Death Celebrations

14. Why Would a Kind God . . . ?

15. Two Kinds of Death

16. Beyond the Tunnel

Epilogue

Afterword, by C. Everett Koop

Copyright Info

Foreword

Sometimes ghosts are silent, preferring to hide themselves . Sometimes, however, specters delight to announce their presence, to rattle chains, blow whispering winds, drop a book off a shelf. We should have known that our home was haunted. But we were young. And life was strong among us.

We had been married just five years and God had just blessed us with our fourth child. The first two were bright, lively, delightful. The fourth was scrubbed, shiny, and new. The third, however, for all her joy, was failing to thrive. She was not gaining weight. Tiny tremors often shook her limbs.

My wife and I loaded up children three and four, the youngest just two months old, and drove across the state to the Kluge Children’s Hospital for tests. In two days we were back home with a diagnosis—Shannon had a malformed brain, and would likely not survive ten years.

Death, the ghost who had always haunted my house, announced his presence.

Still, Shannon did well. While she was always behind her peers, her abilities surpassed the expectations of her doctors. Four years later, however, the seizures came. She would be walking across our living room and suddenly go limp, crashing to the ground. More testing, more medications, and more insistent bumps in the night from our unwelcome specter.

A year later my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. But, we were told, it was the least frightening kind. It would be manageable, a lump in the road. Until I was called in to see the doctor mid-surgery. What they found was far more dangerous than what they expected. A cure, however, was still within reach. We soldiered through the hardships of chemo and radiation. Meanwhile, we balanced Shannon’s seizure meds.

We ignored, as best as we were able, the ghost in the room.

Eighteen months after my wife’s last treatment I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The macabre assessment of medical professionals about Hodgkin’s is that it is the good cancer. I came out the other side skinnier but just as bald as when I started. We came away relieved, believing that we had won the key battles, and that death would be but a silent guest.

Two and a half years after the end of my treatment for Hodgkin’s, however, my wife’s breast cancer had metastasized into her back, breaking a vertebra, and just a quarter inch from impinging on her spine. A month of radiation preceded fifteen months in a back brace. At this point the ghost in our house had virtually taken his own seat at the family dinner table. But the rest of us were all still there. Cancer stood 0-3 in our house. You could almost feel sorry for him.

Just two months after getting out of her back brace, however, my beloved was diagnosed with leukemia. I encouraged her not to be afraid. I told her, Sweetheart, cancer is afraid of you.

Over the course of the next several months we went through treatments and tests. Each test came back with the worst possible odds. First we discovered the source of the leukemia was the previous treatments. Then we discovered the connected genetic mutations. It was all bad news, save for one thing: my beloved’s sister was found to be a perfect match for a transplant. Two months after the transplant, which was four months after the diagnosis, there was no detectable cancer. We had won again.

For two months, at least. Leukemia, at least the kind Denise had, is like a cockroach. Not so hard to send scurrying, but hard to keep away. At this point clinical trials were our only option. Clinical trials are Hail Mary passes—a last desperate attempt to defy defeat before the clock runs out. At this point, Death made himself at home in my favorite easy chair and changed the lock on the front door. It was his house, and we were just dying in it.

Until December 18. That day I tweeted this, Today my wife finally won her battle with cancer. When she passed, the specter of Death in my house did not squeeze her between his icy hands and spirit her away. Instead she slipped through and into the tender, blood-stained hands of her Lord. Ten months later Shannon followed, having attained the victory as well.

Death still inhabits my home. He has grown more silent, perhaps for a time licking his wounds. But he will come back and try again. And again he will lose. All because two thousand years ago, in an insignificant corner of the Empire, Jesus walked into the new garden of the new world. Now all the world is Jesus’ house, and Death is just waiting in it, waiting to die. Jesus haunts him.

I have, over these past few years, given more thought to death than I ever thought I would. I have learned, and unlearned much. And I am still learning and unlearning. I heard wisdom as I read through Joseph Bayly’s book. I felt like Joe was sitting beside me in a hospital room, an older, experienced gentleman who had walked with Jesus for all his days. He spoke to me with grace, with honesty, but most of all, with Gospel hope. He spoke from the grave of the grave, even as he spoke from the grace of the grace.

Reading this book won’t make your loss okay. It won’t take away your sorrow, your longing. It will, however, assure you that Jesus will. We do not bury our dead. We plant them. They will blossom again.

R. C. Sproul Jr.

Ascension Presbyterian Church

Apopka, Florida

Editor’s Preface

This edition of Joe Bayly’s View from a Hearse is, in some ways, closer to the first edition of 1969 than the expanded version of 1973. Nearness to tragedy gave the ’69 version its simplicity and wisdom. Still aching from the loss of three sons, Joe wrote a book that could help others