Nov 1, 2020
VAUGHT—Austin Grant Jr. (AG), age 64, died March 17, 2020, in Janesville, WI.
Persons familiar with hospice care may know they refer to a person’s final days as their last journey. That journey is as individual as the person—but I’ve heard many times of the dying person who suddenly seems to look at or reach for someone unseen. I don’t know if this is just someone seeking comfort at the loss of a loved one, or a way to offer hope of God’s promises of heaven to all who believe. But AG did this and I wondered if the man he repeatedly saw in a dream, fearfully at first, was now welcoming him to his heavenly home. Herein is the third spiritual lesson I learned as I spent time with AG the last 19 months of his life: we don’t know really what was seen, but can cling to the hope God offers us all, regardless of our past.
My brother, Austin Grant (AG) Vaught, did not live a life typically read about in Sabbath Recorder obituaries. He wasn’t a minister, deacon, or even an active participant in any church or the General Conference—but I learned spiritual lessons during his last days, one of which I already identified. Once he became an adult, his life choices took him from church and family, spiritually and geographically. Prior to 2018, after being told he should be dead, medical and in-home care extended his life. Feeling it was time “to find family and to find God,” he moved to Janesville, where I live.
His addictions had taken over his entire life and made family relations hard. His sister Shirley made an effort to meet his request to attend church in Albion, but his desire for a cigarette took him outside before the postlude concluded. Finding it difficult to explain salvation and without our own pastor, I asked Pastor Nate Crandall of Milton, WI, to visit AG. They prayed together, and before Pastor Nate left, AG had a beer in his hands. I’m thinking, what about conditions of turning from sin? Where is the hunger for God’s Word that I had? AG rationalized everything so that nothing was his fault—so what was he to change? My Lesson One was that the gift of salvation was that simple, unconditional, and that prayer was an important first step.
Hearing that our brother, Rev. Jerry Vaught of Portland Area SDB Church in Oregon, would be in the area to attend the Pastors’ Conference in Milton in April 2019, AG asked to be baptized. I likened his request to that of the thief on the cross requesting that Jesus remember him when He got to His kingdom. Time was running out to demonstrate by actions of a changed heart. Lesson Two: It is for God to judge what’s in a man’s heart, not mankind. We were able to get pictures of all five siblings that day.
As his health continued to deteriorate, we saw his personality change to a kinder, more appreciative person, no longer clinging to the addictions that had consumed his life and irreversibly damaged his health. When asked at medical appointments about those, I was tempted to interject how beer and cigarettes were now inaccessible—until realizing he no longer had the desire for them. He had shared with several of us a dream of a man who told him to “come, it was time to go.” At first he wondered if he missed a ride to one of his numerous appointments, but on awakening, the man was gone. (Below is a poem I wrote after he died.)
After his death, things moved on an odd timeline. Due to COVID-19 as well as costs, there’d be no memorial services. We worked against safe-at-home orders to clear his apartment, finally moving salvageable items to my garage because donation centers and resale shops were closed. His home care aide contacted me for a memento, and in our conversation, she stated that as a Christian herself she can assure me that AG was, too, that she talked often with him about it. I realized I struggled to see that because of my bias against his past life choices. Lesson Four leads me to the realization that we all have biases that can blind us to persons who are different from us, by skin color, sexual orientation, or lifestyle, for example. To see the person as God sees them requires removing the blinders of our biases.
—Gay McRoberts, secretary,
Albion SDB Church (& sister)
The Man in the Dream
The man in the dream that he heard that night
Said, “Come, it’s time”, and gave him a fright.
The man in the dream was gone on awaking
But the words said lingered and left him shaking.
The man in the dream said come, but where?
He lived his life poorly, without any care.
The man of the dream appeared yet again
Saying,”come, it’s time”; still he clung to his sin.
Again like a nightmare the man would appear
Shaking him up and drawing him near.
The man of his dreams, so real once more,
Said “Come, it’s time; I’ve opened the door.”
When the man of his dream said, “Come, it’s done.”
He reached out to grasp the hand of God’s Son.
The man of his dreams is real: look and see.
He’s calling your name, saying, “come unto me.”
By Ida Gay McRoberts
3/17/2020