Death and Detachment

My brother-in-law, who has just lost his son and wife, was talking about how difficult it is to care these days about many everyday things, including his work. Yes, after great loss most things seem trivial. I spoke of the process of detachment one often sees in the very old as they progressively feel detached from the things of this world and cast their eyes toward eternity.

I then recalled what his wife, Pamela, had said after Jamie died and before her own sudden passing. “When you lose a child, you don’t think about the past anymore. You think only about the future.” And she wasn’t speaking, I believe, of tomorrow or next year. She too was speaking of eternity, not knowing she would be entering it herself very soon. (Though, in one sense, we always live in eternity.)

It set me wondering about the correct balance for a believer between detachment from this world and commitment to it. Clearly Christianity teaches the value of this world and our time in it. We are to embrace time and the world in which God puts us. At the same time, there is also a healthy detachment that comes from correct valuing. That is, knowing the relative importance and unimportance of things should allow us to be detached from many things that others ardently pursue. (Augustine, I think, called this ordinate love—knowing what should be loved and why.)

I pray that the Pierre family will, in coming days, stay attached to each other and to those things that matter most. Let the other things fall away, brothers and sisters, and think, with hope, about the future.