Yesterday while at Walmart, I was on my way to the check-out through the seasonal aisle when something made me stop. Though the shelves were loaded with flags, red-white-and-blue merchandise, ice chests on wheels, and patriotic novelties, at the end stood a woman inspecting something that wasn’t festive at all: a wooden cross decorated with silk flowers.

Memorial Day had just passed, and the crosses had all been marked down for quick sale. But what did they have to do with Memorial Day?

When I was growing up, the name most frequently used for this holiday was Decoration Day. Families made time for a trip to the cemetery before the last Monday of the month, putting flowers, crosses, or flags on their family graves. Picnicking would come on that Monday, but serious thoughts of loved ones who’d already died came ahead of that.

The Walmart cross display let me know there were still people who followed the grave-decorating tradition, and apparently I was standing down the aisle from one of them. A woman studied the crosses, and I studied her, wondering what was going through her head. She picked one up, gently running her hand across the artificial white flowers.

Who had she buried? And how long ago? Was her heart still hurting as she held the cross? More importantly, did she have a relationship with God? Did she know he had gained victory over death?

As rambunctious kids a few feet from us begged their mothers to buy fireworks, I thought about how serious life becomes after death hits a family. When we were children, we didn’t think about death until a grandpa or great auntie died. Then we watched adults struggle with tears and became aware that death was a big deal, something unusual, unpleasant, and severe.

But of course it doesn’t have to be. In my prayer group this morning, one of the ladies asked the Lord to “take” a woman on our list who was in physical pain and a slow decline. If death was only unpleasant and severe, we couldn’t have justified praying like that. But because our friend was sure of her heavenly destination, asking God for her death was a way to bless her life.

As I stood and watched a stranger struggle over what to do with a Walmart cross, I felt a certain camaraderie with her. I, too, often thought of several important family graves. Eventually the woman gently put the cross back in its place on the shelf and then covered her mouth with her hand, an outward sign of inward turmoil.

In the end, she just walked away.

I hoped she knew about the cross, the one on Calvary, where Jesus’ blasted the power of death like a flame explodes a firecracker. Boom! Gone! Calvary’s cross had no decorative flowers, but what happened there is the one and only reason we could sincerely pray for our dying friend, “Lord, please take her.”

“He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” (Romans 4:25)