“My desire is to depart and be with Christ.”

Easter Hope Amid the Horror of Death

by Regis Martin

As anyone with half-a-brain knows, success in the publishing world is measured by the number of books sold. What many do not know, of course, is that there are only two categories that perennially produce best sellers. Cookbooks and diet books. How wonderfully self-cancelling they are, too. While the one will tell you what to make, the other will catechize you on why you shouldn’t eat it.

Books about death do not sell nearly so well. How do I know this? Because a few years back I wrote such a book and I’m still waiting to see it take the literary world by storm. Of course there is always the possibility that the book was so wretchedly written that no one wants to read it. Not surprisingly, of course, I do not share this glum assessment, which is why I incline to the view that since most people are frightened to death by the subject, not even a treatment as fascinating as my own is likely to get them to go out and actually buy the book.

In fact, just after my book came out, I was able to put the theory to the test by simply leaving several copies in the hands of a most enterprising bookseller, whose place of business happens to be in an up-scale neighborhood. Where, amid the fleshpots of high-end affluence, the thing languished unsold for months and months. Until, finally, the poor woman called me to ask if I’d please come round and take them back. “It’s just too depressing for my customers having them around,” she confessed sheepishly.

And certainly she had a point. Even if you can’t take it with you, who wants to be reminded of the Old Guy coming along to fetch both you and your possessions? Surely not the very rich, for whom death is the ultimate impoverishment.

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