It is striking to me that my last post was over a year ago.
This is the first time I have found the words to write again about my mother. She died last September and I knew when I wrote this, a new reality would sink into the deeper places of my soul. So as I expected, I cry while I write today.
We buried my mother on my birthday. She was 71 as I turned 52.
The end was so hard.
You've said your goodbyes and yet you struggle to let go. "Should I be there at the end? She is 6 hours away and I need to live my life. I have 3 kids still at home and I've spent the last 8 years traveling back and forth never knowing when it would be the last time. I have already missed so much."
"What is the "right" thing to do?"
The question is the problem.
From the very beginning there simply was no "right" thing to do. This entire journey was a half ass attempt to love a dying woman while life just kept moving forward. Children grew up while mom slowly died. Marriage and money got hard while mom slowly died. Relationships with family went sideways while mom slowly died. Who in the world could tell you what was "right" at any time?
The viewing the night before the funeral, almost crushed my brother and I. We had to console people we knew had been just terrible to my mother. Why do people come to offer condolences to the dead when they treated them like garbage while they were alive? We almost lost it a few times.
But the funeral was so kind. Thankfully God had asked me to write my mother's eulogy a year before her death. For several months, I had a birthday trip planned with some friends a few days before my birthday. It was a sweet gift to me to just pull out those words in the Smoky Mountains and dust them off rather than sit down and write them in the moment. On the day of the funeral I spoke and my family sang "It is Well" through our tears. All my kids were present which was deeply kind to them, me and my father and brother. At the graveside, I sang "Amazing Grace". All 4 verses and with a key change!
The surprising truth was that I felt great!! I felt like I had been unleashed and that I had gotten my life back! Yes, I was sad that my mother was dead, but then again, not really! She was with Jesus!! She was no longer in pain. She was in a new resurrected body and could finally see and experience the love that God had always wanted her to know.
She went home.
I was so happy for her and I felt deeply relieved. Even now sometimes when I am worshipping, I see my mother and we are both brimming with the expectation of being in eternity together! I will meet who God intended her to be for the first time in heaven. I will see her as she was intended and not as the world mangled her. I am so excited that I will know my actual mother in glory!
But I know now my mother loved me. She was just a woman on fire most of her life and her ability to love was deeply hindered. I saw beautiful glimpses of that love throughout my life, but maybe mainly during her Alzheimer's.
How did God do that?
That is what He does. He creates beauty from ashes. He is the Creator and Redeemer. He creates our beauty and when we smash it or it is smashed, He redeems it. All simply because He loves us and He is good.
However, grieving is a process, so the story will continue.
We all need time when death interrupts life.
There is still much to tell.
