Road Apples
Nov. 27, 2006

Some thoughts about dying in church

By Tim Sanders

[Portions of this true story first appeared in the February 25, 1987 edition of The Cherokee Sun,. Shortly thereafter, the Sun went out of business. Mr. Sanders contends that there was no connection between those two events, but just to be on the safe side, we promise this is the last time we'll let him mention the episode.]


My wife thinks there is something wrong with my mind, sometimes. She claims that I worry about things that other folks never think about. Maybe she’s right.

Last Sunday I sat in church, listening to our pastor tell the story of a deacon of bygone days who had died during a church service. He had breathed his last while singing one of the great hymns of the faith, and had passed away with a smile on his face. This sounded like a pretty good way to go to me. I did wonder, for a moment, if the congregation had been seated or standing during that hymn. I thought that might have made a difference as to whether the deacon just slumped over quietly and unobtrusively in his pew, or lurched forward and hit his head on something with a resounding whack, which would probably have made a lot of commotion and caused folks not to notice the smile. I just took it for granted he wasn’t in the choir at the time.

At any rate, I was musing on the death of the singing deacon. I was considering the rejoicing he must have heard in Glory when he arrived, having just been in church and making a joyful noise and all, when I got my thumb stuck. What I got it stuck in was one of those things on the back of the pew that you put your communion cups in–a piece of wood with two thumb-sized holes in it. We were sitting on the very last pew, and the one I got my thumb stuck in was on the back of that pew. Now that I think about it, it had no business being there, since nobody ever sits on the floor behind the last pew anyway. I had been sitting with my arm slung over the back of the pew, and I guess I’d been absent-mindedly poking my thumb in and out of that hole for some time, just because it felt good, and finally the thumb had swelled to where it didn’t want to come out. That was when I first realized just where it was.

I pulled at it for a while, hoping no one would notice, and as I worked at it I wondered just what kind of reception I’d get in Heaven if I were to die while trying to extricate my thumb from that little hole. The scene I envisioned at St. Peter’s gate bothered me.

"Name, please?"

"Sanders, sir. Tim Sanders."

"Would that be Tim, Timothy, or Timmy?"

"Well, actually it’s Timothy."

"We’ve got 742 Timothy Sanders arrivals scheduled today. I’ll need a middle initial."

"L, your grace."

"Let’s see, we’ve got a Timothy Ling Sanders from Hong Kong due in today at Gate 14, and a Timothy Lucius Sanders from Detroit who’s supposed to report to Gate 96, and–"

"That’s Timothy Lloyd Sanders, from Centre, Alabama."

"Aha, Centre with an ‘R-E,’ here it is. You weren’t scheduled to arrive until 2008. We had a plate of bad potato salad waiting for you at a covered dish dinner. Somebody penciled you in this morning. Says here you died of a stroke while trying to remove your thumb from one of those little communion cup holder things–what do you call them?"

"I’m not sure, your honor."

"Anyway, it says it was one of those little things on the back of a pew. Is that correct?"

"Well sir ... you see, your holiness–"

"Why was your thumb in the thingamajig to begin with? Were you inserting your cup or taking it out?"

"Neither one. I ... uh ... I kind of had my arm hanging over the back of the pew, and I was just, you know, kind of fooling around–"

"Fooling around, were we? During a church service?"

"It ... uh ... was almost over. It was 11:45, and the preacher was running out of steam."

"Hmmmm. And you say the device you stuck your thumb in wasn’t even the one you were supposed to be using on the back of the pew in front of you, but the one on the back of your own pew."

"That’s why my wife couldn’t help me pull it out. She’s good at stuff like that, but she couldn’t reach it. When the last congregational hymn was announced and the choir director asked us to stand, I panicked. The harder I pulled, the tighter it got. Everybody else was standing, and my wife kept whispering that I should quit horsing around and stand up like a normal Baptist. I managed to get one foot on the back of the pew and give a good healthy yank, and that’s all I remember."

"Well, son, while you were in the process of leaving your earthly abode and making a shambles of a perfectly good church service, services in another church were disrupted as well. As it turned out, the paramedics couldn’t loosen you from that pew, not even with soap. A doctor had to be called to the scene, and the closest church with a doctor was a Methodist church. The doctor was on his way when he collided with your Sunday School teacher, who was speeding toward K-Mart to get a crowbar and a hammer. By the time they arrived, it was too late. It was an awful mess. You and your thumb antics managed to ruin two perfectly good church services, an excellent walnut pew, a new Lincoln Town Car and a 1984 Chevy Fleetside pickup, and almost an entire can of Crisco from the fellowship hall kitchen. Not to mention screwing up my Celestial Freshman Orientation list. You should be ashamed!"

Those were the kind of thoughts that were going through my head when I finally worked my thumb loose, just before the congregation stood for the final hymn.

I’d meant to ask the pastor if that deacon he’d talked about was standing or sitting when he died, but after the service was over, all I could think of was getting home and soaking my thumb.