storiesfromhome4

My dad has always had this saying: “People die.”

He would talk about how important it is to prepare for death while you are still alive. He often used the analogy of a day.

There is the morning, the afternoon and the evening. Each section represents a different season of life.

The morning is full of anticipation. You wake up and think about the day ahead. There is possibility, expectation and a sense that there is still so much time.

Then comes the afternoon. This is when you get on with the work of the day. You are busy, engaged, doing what needs to be done. You are living.

And then comes the evening.

The evening is quieter. The work is finished. You rest.

In the same way, life has its different sections. One season leads into another. The morning is connected to the afternoon, and the afternoon eventually leads to the evening.

And perhaps death is simply the evening of this life.

I have never really had a problem, especially in more recent years, with talking about death or acknowledging that everything eventually dies. That doesn’t mean it makes death any less frightening or uncomfortable.

From a Christian perspective, it can be easy to say that death is simply a step into heaven. That this world is not our ultimate home. That those who die professing Jesus will rejoice in His presence, with their tears wiped away, with no more pain, no more suffering and no more death.

And that fills me with hope.

But somehow, it doesn’t completely answer the pain of losing someone you love.

Because even if I believe that the person I have lost is with Jesus, their absence is still here.

There is a space where they used to be.

A person who was woven into the ordinary fabric of your life is suddenly no longer there, and somehow the rest of the world just carries on.

That part has always seemed strange to me.

The world doesn’t stop.

Cars still drive down the road. Shops still open. People still go to work. Children still go to school. People laugh. People eat. People make plans.

I can imagine a sense of wondering, why the world does not stop, How dare everything continue as though nothing has happened? For the grieving person, everything has happened.

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Not the most exciting topic, I know.

You may even be thinking, Isn’t this blog supposed to be about occupational therapy and the adventure of being back in Zambia?

The answer is yes.

It’s all of that—and more.

Being here in Zambia has made me think about life in ways I perhaps wasn’t expecting.

A few days ago, I drove past a road traffic accident.

Three people had died at the scene. It shook me. I remember feeling deeply grieved for people I had never met, Because they were someone’s person.

Road traffic injuries are a significant public health issue in Zambia. According to the Zambia Police Service’s 2025 annual road traffic crash report, there were 38,712 road traffic crashes, with 2,567 people killed and 7,045 seriously injured.

When I break that number down, it becomes even harder to comprehend.

That is roughly seven people dying every day, from road traffic accidents and around forty-nine people every week.

Thats more than two hundred people every month.

2,567 people.

And behind every number is a family..

2,567 families experiencing some version of that moment when the world doesn’t stop, even though theirs has. 2,567 families having to bury someone. 2,567 groups of people learning how to live in a world that now looks slightly different because someone is missing from it.

My heart ached this weekend.

The following day, I attended a funeral for a colleague who had lost her brother.

A young man and a father, and once again, I found myself confronted with the reality of death.

Death just seems so present here. It’s not that people aren’t dying in the UK or in other parts of the world, they are. But somehow, here, death feels much closer, much more visible, almost like an everyday occurrence.

Someone knows someone who has died. You hear of a death, then another, and another. Funerals become part of the rhythm of life, and from being surrounded by it so often, comes a strange sense of desensitisation.

Not that people stop caring. Not that the loss of a life becomes insignificant. But when death becomes something you encounter so frequently, you begin to expect it. You hear the news, you sympathise, you attend the funeral, and then life carries on.

Morning still comes.

Afternoon still arrives.

And eventually, evening comes.

I think that is the strange tension of death, in that the world keeps moving, even when your world has stopped. And maybe this is where my dad’s analogy becomes even more meaningful to me.

If life really is like a day, then maybe the purpose isn’t to spend our whole lives being afraid of the evening.

Maybe it is to live well in the morning.

To engage fully in the afternoon.

To love people deeply.

To do the work we have been given, and to do it well.

To say the things that need saying. (Make that phone call! Tell your loved one they are loved!)

To forgive.

To make memories

To know God.

And when evening eventually comes, to rest.

I don’t think believing in heaven removes the pain of death.

Faith was never supposed to make grief painless, and we see Jesus Himself wept at the death of Lazarus. There is something deeply human about grieving someone we love, even when we have hope that death is not the end.

So I am learning that preparing for death isn’t simply about preparing to die.

Perhaps it is about learning how to live.

Because we don’t know when our morning will become afternoon, or when afternoon will quietly become evening.

So……“People die.”

It sounds blunt, but I think those words mean something much more tender:

People die. So while they are here, love them.

And while you are here

live.