USA: Billy Graham, 89, On Life, Death, Loss Of His Beloved Ruth

Newsmaker....Pilgrim's Progress. Photo: Chuck Burton/Associated Press

WASHINGTON, DC (AARP Magazine), November 14, 2007:

By Janet Kinosian

It's been nearly 60 years since Billy Graham led his first major evangelistic crusade. Now 89 and slowed by Parkinson’s disease, Graham spends most of his time at his North Carolina mountaintop home. We asked him about facing his own last days…and those of his wife, Ruth, who died in June.

Grief Sometimes we need to be alone with our memories and our hurts. We just need to guard against making this our only response, because it’s not healthy. The Book of Psalms says God wants us to “cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you.”

Ruth She was a strong woman, and she had learned how to cope with being alone over the years because I traveled so much. I feel as if part of me has been ripped out, and in a sense that’s what has happened, because Ruth was such an important part of my life.

Denial Some people refuse to think about practical matters, like their wills and where they will be buried, because they don’t like to think about their death. But someday it will be too late. Incidentally, I believe this is why some people avoid thinking about their relationship with God, also—and that’s not wise, either. As a Christian minister, I believe the most important thing I can do is urge people to put their faith and hope in Christ, and commit their lives to Him.

Heaven I don’t know what I’ll see when I enter Heaven, because it is far more glorious than anything we can imagine. I do know this: Heaven is the dwelling place of God, and someday I will see Him face to face.

Darkness Ruth and our children used to kid me about worrying too much. They called me Puddleglum, after one of C.S. Lewis’s characters in The Chronicles of Narnia who tended to be a pessimist. They were reminding me that I wasn’t trusting God the way I should.

His epitaph I haven’t written it, and I’m not sure I should. Whatever it is, I hope it will be simple and that it will point people not to me but to the One I served.

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