Home for Christmas
My mother fought cancer prayerfully, bravely and
quietly for the better part of five years – the years that I finished up high school
and college. She had multiple surgeries,
each one hopefully the one that would finally turn the tide in her favor.
I attended St. Norbert College, which was a short 20-minute
drive, so I lived at home to save on the cost.
I think God worked it out that way because, as the last child still
living at home, we had several deep discussions where she shared things of her
heart with me that she never had before. Those talks were great blessings.
I knew that she was getting tired; I knew that she was
getting weaker, but you would never have known it to talk with her. Then, the first week of December that year
she had her final surgery. The surgeon
found an inoperable tumor on her aorta and simply stitched her back up. I didn’t know that when I stopped at St Mary
Hospital on my way home from classes.
I stopped at the open doorway as she looked
asleep. I was considering just quietly
backing out as she opened her eyes and managed a smile. She patted the bed next to her as a sign to sit
next to her. I held her hand; it felt
cold.
“Danny,” she said, “I was so disappointed when I
opened my eyes after the surgery and I saw the hospital room. I was hoping to see Heaven.” It was hard to hear her say that as I knew
that she had a different goal now than recovery. She wanted to be in Heaven.
The next day when I stopped in I heard the surgeon
tell my father that It may not be the best thing to tell my mother that there
was nothing else they could do for her, for her own peace of mind. I suppose I could have told them at that
point that she already had peace of mind, but I didn’t feel that it was my
place to tell either of them.
My mom came home for a couple of weeks; she wanted to
be in her own house. My sister Sandy
spent the days taking care of her until my dad got home from work.
I was fortunate enough to have tested out of a
semester of classes, so I finished my degree requirements a half-year early,
just before Christmas. My last exams
were on December 21st. When I
got home I went down the hall and knocked on the door. My mom told me to come in; again, when I came
through the door she smiled at me and patted the bed next to her. I remember her response, “So, you are all
finished!” She squeezed my hand. “All my work is done now.”
Finally, on the evening of December 23rd,
my father came up the hall and told me that she had to go to the hospital. He called an ambulance. My father rode in the ambulance and I
followed in my father’s car. After they
had her admitted and in her room the doctor told us that it would be only a
matter of an hour or so as she was very weak.
They had given her sedatives and pain medications, so
she wasn’t awake. There was nothing to
do; there was really nothing to say. I
took her hand and told her that I loved her.
During the night all of my siblings filtered in the hospital room. Her breathing was very labored, but her heartbeat
was strong. In the morning my father
went home to get some rest, a shower, and something to eat. Most everyone came and went off and on. I stayed there at her bedside.
In the afternoon of Christmas Eve, my mother’s sister
Margaret and her husband Clem arrived. Around
five o’clock it was Clem who told me to go to the cafeteria and get a bite of
supper as I hadn’t eaten all day.
Looking back, I guess none of my siblings wanted to try to get me to
leave the room. They figured rightly that I wouldn't argue with my uncle. My brother-in-law Ron
then said he’d go with me, and so we did leave.
I really don’t remember that I ate much of anything, and after just ten minutes or so, I felt a need to get back upstairs. As the elevator opened, I could hear everyone
crying. Uncle Clem was right there to
tell me that just a minute of so after I left, my mother stopped
breathing. I hurried to the room.
At first I felt guilty that I wasn’t there at the
moment of her death. Then I was angry
with myself. As I kissed her forehead
and told her that I loved her it occurred to me that just perhaps this is the
way she wanted it. Maybe she wanted to protect
me. Whatever the truth of the moment, I
very quickly understood that there was nothing to be gained by fretting over
it. It was just the reality of the
situation.
As I drove my father and I home from the hospital, we
were silent. We had never talked about
deep things like death, and it was difficult to start in the moment. It was pouring rain. We sat in silence while the light was
red. The rain was loud on the car
roof. The wipers had a hard time keeping
up with the intensity of the rain, and they didn’t help with my tears at
all. Suddenly I turned to my father and
said, “Mom’s celebrating Christmas in Heaven – it’s exactly what she wanted.” I said it because I knew it was the truth. She shared that deep desire with me weeks
earlier as I sat next to her on the hospital bed. Her Christmas wish had come true.
“And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you
may be also.” John 14:3
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
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