Fearful Loneliness
Miss Toshiko Sasaki lost everything on the day Hiroshima was bombed. Her home was destroyed and her parents and younger brother died. She suffered a compound fracture of her leg, months of nightmarish pain, and a permanently crippled condition. As she grew more and more depressed and morbid, she was befriended by a German missionary priest, himself a survivor of the bomb blast. The priest walked great distances to see her in spite of his own pain and weakness. He carefully introduced religion into their talks, which she at first bitterly resisted. She had a hard time with the idea of a loving God that would allow the suffering she had seen. Over time, the priest’s patient faithfulness changed her heart, and she became a Christian.
After recovering from her wounds Sasaki worked in a retirement home for old people and eventually became its director. She found that her greatest gift as a Christian was the ability to help others die in peace:
She had seen so much death in Hiroshima after the bombing, and had seen what strange things so many people did when they were cornered by death, that nothing now surprised or frightened her. The first time she stood watch by a dying inmate, she vividly remembered a night soon after the bombing when she had lain out in the open, uncared for, in dreadful pain, beside a young man who was dying. She had talked with him all night, and had become aware, above all, of his fearful loneliness. She had watched him die in the morning. At deathbeds in the home, she was always mindful of this terrible solitude. She would speak little to the dying person but would hold a hand or touch an arm, as an assertion, simply, that she was there.534
We all seem to worry about finding “the right thing to say” to a dying person and their loved ones. If we are able to share God’s love and provide spiritual comfort with words, we should certainly do so. However, this story is an inspiring reminder that our presence and touch are usually more important than what we say to a person facing the end of life.
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
—Ephesians 2:67