Last night, at 9:50 p.m., my mother joined the great cloud of witnesses.
My siblings and I had my parents around until we were pretty well advanced in years. Yet, we felt this sense of uncovering as we said our final good-byes. We are now the oldest ones. There is no one left to parent us, to offer that particular kind of loving, knowing wisdom.
At 1:15 a.m. this morning, two lovely and kind women from the Dallas Country Medical Examiners office came to my mother’s house to pick up her body. My mother, generous to the end, knew that the unusual way she had dealt with her health would make her a very, very good subject for some lucky medical student. The two women who came for her were awed at two things in particular: first, my mother’s beauty. When the challenge of still trying to breathe finally ended, and she fully relaxed in the arms of Jesus, the physical shell left behind was also transformed into exquisite loveliness. Second: the choices my mother had made health-wise that are going to be such a gift to the medical world. They don’t get many like her.
As for me right at this moment: I am tired, but at peace. I did what I needed to do these last long few weeks since her catastrophic stroke on August 13, 2010. So did the rest of her family, and this was a wonderful, final gift to her, a holy act.
I just heard from a member of my church–his dad has just died unexpectedly. I had buried his mother last spring. I will be going back to work sooner than expected, but that is OK. Mother would have done the same. Thanks be to God.