It was estate sale season, and my then four-year-old son dutifully trailed my friend and me in and out of houses. It was a season of vintage cookbooks and bakeware, and chairs. Oh, so many chairs, two for $5, four for $20 or free,they’re on the curb for the taking. It got to a point where my husband issued a no-more-chair mandate.

I may have overdone it with the estate sales and the four-year-old.

The first clue was when he wanted to know why we went to people's houses and just took things from them. I explained that sometimes when people die or elderly people need to move, their children have a sale to help get rid of their belongings and make money.

The second clue was the yellow Post-It notes on the revolving bookcase, the lamp, the area rug, the framed prints, the dining room table andthe chairs. On each note, my son had scrawled random numbers: 7, 4, 1, 0, 2.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Putting price tags on stuff I’m going to sell when you and Dad die.”

I noticed the $2 price tag on the dining room table. “Well, I bet you could get more than $2 for the table.” And then I explained that Dad and I had no intention of dying anytime soon, so there was no rush for the estate sale.

Four months ago, my oldest sister—by three and a half years—had no intention of dying either. That changed when her cancer that had been in remission returned as angiosarcoma, a rare type of cancer. A few days ago, she wrote on her Caring Bridge, “So we are faced with a decision, have a huge operation or have no continued medical intervention.”

She and her husband are still asking questions, still seeing surgeons—and my sister could be seeing Jesus sooner than expected. And this most amazing truth of seeing Jesus is the one sure thing for my sister and brother-in-law, and they are full of anticipation in this heart-wrenching time.

This might be an inherited trait from our mother. Several years ago, my mother had surgery for congestive heart failure. For some reason, maybe the proximity of Chicago to Jefferson City, Missouri, I was the designated daughter to be with our mom for her surgery.

All seemed well until her doctor came out and asked me, “Have you noticed if your mother has had suicidal thoughts?”

“What?” I didn’t see that question coming.

“Well, just as we were giving her the anesthetic, she said, ‘It will be all right if I die.’”

My reaction shows why you never send the youngest sibling to sit by a parent’s hospital bed. I laughed right out loud. “Oh, that. Has my mother ever talked about her faith with you?”

“Well, yes,” the doctor replied. I’m sure she didn’t see that question coming. “It means a lot to her.” Go, Mom.

“Well, far from despair, my mother is full of hope that should she die, she will see Jesus.”

For my sister, the anticipation of seeing Jesus was honed long before this shadow of death that now hovers over her. It’s her eternal perspective in life that has shaped her perspective of death. It’s a lot like the Apostle Paul’s perspective in Philippians 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” And like Paul, she is “hard pressed between the two.”

It’s not always easy to be hard pressed between the two. Life just takes over. Schedules fill up with commitments. The financial advisor wants to know how to invest your money. Vacation plans need to work around school schedules. College trips need to be planned. The house needs more estate sale chairs (or not).

Life has a funny way of skewing the eternal perspective, until “we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” (Hebrews 2:9, KJV)

We see Jesus. We have hope in life and in death.