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Facing death was the last lesson Pop taught
By Jeff Kaley, Duncan Banner
Sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, holding my father’s hand as the last breath of life crossed his lips, a million memories passed through my mind in a nanosecond.
I was fortunate to share nearly 54 of Vaughn Kaley’s 75 years on the planet, and at that moment on Tuesday, March 1, those years seemed compressed into an eye blink, a final sigh and a lingering thought: Oh, Pop, I hope death is as kind this time as it was the first time.
You see, the afternoon of March 1, 2005 was no the first time Dad glimpsed what’s on the other side – it was just the time he stayed there.
Twenty-four years ago, my father suffered a massive heart attack. It was the day the words "myocardial infarction" entered the family lexicon and Dad’s heart became an over-riding factor in the lives of my mother, my brother and I.
That day in 1981, three-quarters of his heart was severely damaged and he actually experienced death while lying on an operating table at Crawford Memorial Hospital in Robinson, Illinois. Only the persistent work of a doctor named Mike Elliott, who kept "hitting" Dad with the defibrillator paddles until he regained consciousness, kept Vaughn Kaley alive that day.
A couple years later, Pop had reestablished his life. There were many changes, of course. He had to scale back his workload as a senior vice president at the Second National Bank, and he moved to the background in some of the political, religious and civic organizations in which he’d been a leader.
But he also resumed many activities and he recaptured the personality that made him such a beloved figure in our family and in that little corn and oil community in the Wabash River Valley.
(It’s a heady realization when you grasp that both of your parents are "beloved," and that a key reason for that is because they’re deeply spiritual. Throughout their lives, my father and mother have been shining examples of a tenet that’s universal in all spiritual thought; what in Christianity is crystallized in the commandment: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.")
For months after the heart attack, I’d resisted the urge to ask Pop about the near-death experience. I wasn’t sure how he would react.
But one July afternoon in 1983, I had to know. So, while we sat on the back porch at his home, both reading a newspaper, the question slipped out: "Pop, what was it like that day you died? Can you remember dying?"
A look of serenity came to my father’s face that I’d never seen before. He lowered the sports section he was reading, gave me a warm smile and said, "You know, Jeffer, I’ll never be afraid of death again."
In the next few moments, Dad gave me a glimpse of what he’d experienced while dying.
"There was no bright light at the end of a tunnel," he said. "I didn’t have an ‘out of body’ experience, I wasn’t hovering above the operating table, watching what was going on below. Nothing like that.
"I didn’t see the face of Jesus, didn’t hear the singing of angels or any heavenly voice calling me ‘home.’ Other people may experience that, but I didn’t"
So, Pop, what did you feel? What was out there?
Dad’s grin grew wider and a far-away look came into his eyes. Then he said, "It was just such an amazing feeling of peace. I’ve never experienced such peacefulness in my life. It’s almost unexplainable.
"I remember thinking: If this is how death feels, what are we so worried about? If that feeling of peace is how it’s going to be, I’ll never be afraid of death again.
"It was wonderful."
Two decades later, as Vaughn Kaley drew his final breath and we who loved him so deeply began to mourn and comfort one another, I found strength in the memory of that conversation.
The serenity Dad described explained why, after months of physical agony caused by cancer, hardening of the arteries and a heart that just couldn’t cope any longer, on March 1, my father smiled as he met death.
"If that feeling of peace is how it’s going to be, I’ll never be afraid of death again."
Of the thousands of lessons Pop passed along during a meaningful life, that is the greatest of them all.
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