And Just Like That, She Was Gone
April 16, 2013: The last day that Mama would take a breath of earthly air on her own.
Lord, It seems to me as if we live just a few minutes….We make our mark for good or ill….we mark off the years and the days one by one…and then….. there just aren’t any more.
Just…..STOP. THE END. LAST DAY. THAT’S ALL.
Incredibly sobering!!!!
I can’t describe in words the feeling I get when I look at this precious calendar, my Lord. I don’t like it much…the abrupt “STOP”. NO MORE……
It feels like there ought to be a story after the last mark, Lord. Something that kind of explains the abrupt END! Something that eases us out….
But there IS a story…many stories, in fact that You wrote on my heart after that last “X”; stories that tender my heart; stories that make me all the more certain that my Mother’s God, whom she introduced me to, IS God!
Death seems so cruel however it comes….
For me, A phone call…
“Your mother is sick. She’s not responding well. I’ve called an ambulance…….”
A Doctor:
“Your mother has a very large bleed.”
“I need to know NOW if you want her intubated.”
WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!! I WASN’T READY FOR THIS! WHAT??? A SWORD ENTERED MY SOUL.
I said to Blake, “I can’t do this.” And immediately, I thought of a gift that had been given to me just hours earlier that very day which said, “I Can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” WOW! Talk about a word in due season!! I knew at that moment why I had been given that gift.
Looking back, I remember so vividly when Mama nearly burned her apartment down after forgetting that she had something on the stove and going to bed. It was no accident that someone came visiting that night!
She’d cared for Calvin so faithfully up to his death and when she herself saw that she was becoming forgetful, we had asked You about it.
And on the back, she’d blotted her lips and left this prayer in her Bible.
And You answered her, my Lord! It was nothing short of a miracle that Mama was able to live out her days at WCV.
I remember sitting with Jim McIntire at the VA office and the LOOOOOOOOONG list of documentation he needed in order to receive the spousal benefits to live there. Documentation of the last corespondence Calvin had with the VA, Marriage certificates, Calvin’s death certificate; Calvin’s x-wife’s death certificate, and on and on and on…………..
At this point, Mama would NEVER remember where any of these things were, IF indeed she even had them.
But wait…..
Jim seems to remember that Calvin has a file that Mama had helped him put together several years earlier.
And what do you know??? It was ALLLLLL RIGHT THERE!!! Mama had worked on getting some VA assistance for Calvin years earlier and it had been to no avail for him.
But YOU knew, my Lord, that in fact, You were even then, providing for MAMA’S care in her twilight years.
Why does that not surprise me??? For doesYour Word not say, “I will go ahead of you and prepare the way…” Mama thought she was working on something for Calvin. You were working on something for HER.
And so, to remind Mama always of our prayers and that she was where the Lord had placed her, I put one of Mama’s favorite pictures of me looking up to heaven in a frame inscribed with this verse:
“See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.” Ex. 23:20
For us, it was a reminder for those days when she became discontented, as old folks in this kind of place do at times, of how You, Oh Lord had gone before her and prepared this beautiful place for her to live out her days. And I told her I wanted her to remember when she looked at it how we had prayed and that I would continue to pray for her.
But this time, You were going ahead of ME and preparing me for the day when You would come for Mama and take her to THE ultimate place that You had prepared for her; for after her move to heaven, I was told that she had been found with this picture in her possession.
“Had she reached for something when she was falling and knocked it off the wall, causing it to be underneath her body?”
“No ma’am,” answered the paramedic. “It was IN HER POSSESSION.”
“Please don’t tell me something to make me feel better. I really want to know exactly where it was and how you think it got there.”
“Ma’am, it was IN HER POSSESSION. My partner read it when he put it aside while I was working on her. We all felt inspired by it…so much so that we came back afterwards and told our supervisor about it. Ma’am, she was holding it.”
Because of the way that my mother was laying when she was found, as if she had been gently laid on the floor; because of the way her knees were bent with her shins propped against the closet door, as if she had first fallen to her knees; because of the picture she was holding in her hand when she was found, I cannot help but wonder…Did she walk out of the bathroom to find YOU standing there waiting to take her home? Did the angel of the Lord hand her the picture?
I don’t know exactly how it happened.
But for now, I know this…
It was NO ACCIDENT that my Mama was able to live out her days at WCV. It was NO ACCIDENT that I received the gift that I received that day; It was NO ACCIDENT that my Mama was holding THAT picture with THAT Scripture on it.
“You who have been borne by Me from birth
And have been carried by Me from the womb;
Even to your old age, I shall be the same,
And even to your graying years I shall bear you!
I have done it, and I shall carry you;
And I shall bear you, and I shall deliver you.” Is. 46:3b,4