Living to Die: An Ohio Woman Showed How to Do It with Joy

Y ou will die. I will die. You may have had the dearest of loved ones die all too early already. During Christmas, a woman died, at age 41, though she never thought she would make it even that far. And her message to the world was about remembering that you will die. And she meant it in an encouraging way. Use your time well and give thanks.

When she was eleven, Emily DeArdo was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. She almost died as she was graduating from college. A double-lung transplant saved her life.

She told me she wasn’t afraid of death, but dying was another thing — especially during Covid. Emily and her family had been through so much suffering together. Not to be together would have been agony. She was so grateful that she didn’t die during that awful time when so many died alone.

Emily wrote a book about death, Living Memento Mori: My Journey through the Stations of the Cross. I recommend it even though most of us don’t really want to think about death. But it’s important to contemplate it, because that makes it less terrifying and exotic. It focuses our lives.

“I’m not afraid of death,” she told me,

because as a Catholic Christian I know that my home is with Jesus in Heaven forever. So I’m not afraid of death in that sense, because death means that I get to go home and see Jesus face to face. I’ve been blessed with some amazing priests in my life who have been so generous in giving their time in counseling me during near-death moments and in giving me the sacraments. I feel at peace with death.

Emily had so much pain but didn’t feel she was a victim. She believed that not only is no one entitled to a life without suffering but that the Creator of the universe makes use of every bit of our efforts, sacrifices, and, yes, sufferings. She believed there was a purpose in her having CF. God “created me for a reason.” she said. “And CF is part of how he created me — so it’s part of my reason for existing. It’s part of my vocation.”

When I talked to her in 2020, she said,

Suddenly everyone has been confronted with the fact that death is here! It’s real! We can’t escape it! There’s really nothing we can do to avoid it. Suddenly everyone’s talking about respiratory issues and ventilators and hospital ICUs, and it felt like a whole part of my world that no one ever saw was being thrust into the spotlight.

I think at its heart, this is about control — or the illusion of control. We figure that we eat well, we take vitamins, we have our Peloton workouts, and that’s going to be enough to stave off death. It’s not. We have no control over how long we’re here. That’s entirely in God’s hands. Sure, we can do things to keep our bodies and minds healthy, and that’s important! But in the end, our mortality is a fact of life. We will die. So how are we living today?

There’s something providential about Emily’s dying during Christmas. There is so much suffering in the world. And mothers, goodness, mothers suffer so much — especially if they are on their own. Emily was a bit of a mystic and spiritual mother. Not the same as feeding and bathing and making ends meet — and yet that kind of mother plays a critical role in the world. She took the role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, super seriously. Reflecting on both her own suffering and the pain that is so pervasive, she said:

Mary knows. I think that’s one of the best things about her, and why I love her so much. Full of grace, but also, a very human woman. She experiences, like her Son, everything. She loses her husband. She has the confusion with Joseph not understanding her vocation. She watches her son die a horrible death. She was lonely, she didn’t always know what was happening, but she was faithful. Mary stayed. She hung on, even when it wasn’t clear what was going on. ‘Son, why have you done this to us?’ She doesn’t always know. But she believes, and she stays the course.

There’s a recent piece in the journal First Things by Rabbi Mark Gottlieb from a Jewish persecutive on some of the historic facts of the life of Jesus. Even if you aren’t theologically on board, there is a tremendous witness from Mary about so much of what we live with day to day and sometimes don’t fully appreciate in our neighbors’ lives — or even our own.

This is not the first time in recent weeks that I have written about the life of a person who probably was somewhat hidden to the mainstream world but who was also probably a saint. Emily DeArdo lived her life with joy amid her suffering and loved her family and friends who accompanied her with such gratitude.

“Every single life has worth,” Emily told me when I talked with her about her book. She emphasized that she believed it “passionately.” The value of life is not about productivity, but about the life. We forget that because we fear suffering. But we cannot throw away life. She was grateful for her Catholic faith that understood and communicated this, and that she wanted to communicate with her witness.

Consider buying Emily’s book, Memento Mori, for a reflection on the more that we all need to be thinking about, whatever we do or do not believe. And if you are a person of prayer, whisper a prayer for her family and friends who are grieving, and for all who died lately who won’t have a column written about them.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.