In what ended up being his final Sunday school lesson at Maranatha Baptist Church, Jimmy Carter discussed mortality, specifically his own. The month was November 2019.
Following a series of illnesses and injuries, he had lately fallen and fractured his pelvis, a setback that served as a reminder to everyone around him—and to him, apparently—that even though he was 95 years old and in good physical health, he was not immortal.
Following his passing on Sunday at the age of 100, Mr. Carter’s legacy has been examined in its entirety, including his involvement with charitable organizations like Habitat for Humanity, his efforts to cure diseases and support free and fair elections, and his accomplishments and shortcomings as president.
Another item he left behind is this: He accumulated a collection of observations throughout the years through writing, public remarks, and Sunday school classes that amounted to an open, lucid, and developing examination of death in a society where the topic is sometimes taboo and shrouded in a sense of dread.
He published more books than any other American president, and he wrote about death. He talked about it in letters to friends and in speeches.
His Christian faith produced those observations. Experience also shaped his viewpoint; he became fluent with death after seeing the deaths of several of his closest relatives, including all of his younger siblings, before him.
His own growing age also influenced his opinions. He talked about the mounting health issues, such as cancer that had spread to his brain, and the feeling that the end was near.
At Sunday school that morning in 2019, he said that he did not think he would survive for long after his cancer diagnosis. “I assumed, naturally, I was going to die very quickly,” he told the packed church. He lived nine more years.
“By the time I was 12 or 13 years old, my anxiety about this became so intense that at the end of every prayer, until after I was an adult, before Amen, I added the words, ‘And, God, please help me believe in the resurrection.’”
“Living Faith,” 1996
Mr. Carter recalled his childhood anxieties, which were sparked by the lectures of the pastor about how “all believers,” as he stated it, “would someday enjoy a similar resurrection” and the lessons he learned in church about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“As I grew older,” Mr. Carter wrote, “I began to wonder whether this could be true.”
He was concerned as a boy that even an iota of doubt could lead him to a different fate, relegating him to an eternity separated from his family, particularly his parents. “These two people were the core of my existence,” he wrote, “and I couldn’t bear the idea that I would not be with them forever.”
“I realize that my physical strength and endurance are steadily declining, and I am having to learn how to conserve them, but I have found with relief and gratitude — even when facing the prospect of an early death from cancer in my liver and brain — that my faith as a Christian is still unwavering and sustaining.”
“Faith: A Journey for All,” published in 2018
Mr. Carter’s beliefs grew stronger as he grew older and began to define his outlook on life and death.
He identified himself as a born-again Christian. In a 2012 interview with an influential evangelical theologian, Mr. Carter said his aim had been to “pattern my life and my own fallible human ways after Jesus’s life.”
“Faith in something,” he has written in several books, “is an inducement not to dormancy but to action.”
“If I were an amputee, for instance, my prayer would not be to restore my leg but to help me make the best of my condition, and to be thankful for life and opportunities to be a blessing to others. At the moment, we are monitoring the status of my cancer, and my prayers about my own health are similar to this.”
“Faith: A Journey for All”
In 2015, while monitoring the Guyana elections, Mr. Carter reported feeling unwell. Doctors discovered a tiny tumor on his liver when he got back to Georgia, and it turned out to be cancerous.
Doctors found that the disease had gone to his brain after removing the lump.
Considering that he was 90 years old at the time, the prognosis was dire. However, he started a rigorous treatment plan for metastatic melanoma, which included a medication that had only been approved a few months prior to his start.
At Sunday school, four months later, he declared that scans had ruled out the illness.
“When other members of my family realized that they had a terminal illness, the finest medical care was available to them. But each chose to forgo elaborate artificial life-support systems and, with a few friends and family members at their bedside, they died peacefully.”
“The Virtues of Aging,” published in 1998
Mr. Carter had a very concrete awareness of mortality.
Pancreatic cancer claimed the lives of his father, brother, and two sisters. Lillian Carter, his mother, passed away from breast cancer. Although she passed away at the age of 85, Mr. Carter pointed out that his brother Billy was 51, his sister Gloria was 64, his sister Ruth was 54, and his father, James Carter Sr., was 59.
In 2015, his 28-year-old grandson, Jeremy, passed away from a heart attack.
Mr. Carter described how, despite their suffering, his mother and brother maintained their sense of humor. He also respected his sister Ruth, a spiritual healer and preacher, for her unwavering faith.
“If our doctors tell us that we have a terminal illness and can expect to live only another year, or five years, how would we respond? In fact, we confront exactly the same question if we are still healthy and have a life expectancy of fifteen or twenty more years.”
“The Virtues of Aging”
Many people found inspiration in Mr. Carter in his last years, but those closest to him also felt irritation and anxiety because of his intransigence in continuing to work despite his age and illness.
Despite having a black eye and bruises from a fall at home in 2019, he was in Nashville just hours later, assisting with the porch assembly of Habitat for Humanity-built homes. His family and attendants insisted that he should skip his Sunday school class when he broke his pelvis in another incident a few weeks later. Nevertheless, he positioned himself in front of the crowd.
When the Carter Center revealed in February 2023 that he had entered hospice care, that tenacity was once again evident. Many thought the end was coming quickly. But once more, Mr. Carter went against what people expected of him. That year, he celebrated his 99th birthday in October and another anniversary with his wife, Rosalynn, in July.
Mr. Carter’s attendance at Mrs. Carter’s funeral rites after her death in November 2023 at the age of 96 demonstrated both his weakness and his unwavering commitment to his wife.
“Perhaps the most troubling aspect of our later years is the need to face the inevitability of our own impending physical death. For some people, this fact becomes a cause of great distress, sometimes with attendant resentment against God or even those around us.”
“The Virtues of Aging”
Growing older is challenging. Even a former president who has access to the best medical treatment and ongoing staff assistance can attest to that.
Mr. Carter continued to travel the world, teach, write, and engage in his interests, such as bird watching, far into his 90s. However, time eventually caught up with him. The coronavirus pandemic further ensnared him. In the same modest house where he had lived for decades, he spent his last years with Mrs. Carter.
His passing caused great sorrow in Plains, a little Georgian town where Mr. Carter’s home was located just off the main road. However, there was a tinge of another emotion, one that was not quite relief but was somewhat similar: the conviction that he had deserved his rest after leading such a long, fruitful, and diverse life.
Many people who knew him and many others who were only related to him by his legacy claim that his passing left a gap in the world, in his community, and in his family. Even still, a lot of people in Plains thought that his passing was a step toward the eternal life he recalled the pastor teaching about rather than its conclusion.
He also had that belief.
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