What Is Your Fragrance?.

See You Later Mom!.

The clock had never moved so slowly. I looked around the waiting room; so many people yet I felt like I was lost with a group of strangers. Even though I was hoping for the phone to ring, I still jumped every time it did. Each time was another progress report, chest opened up, blood pumping through the machine now, valve replaced. The sky was getting darker, more from storm clouds moving in than from the sun going down. A few rumbles of thunder in the distance, and then a loud crash of thunder that accompanied a flash of lightening. My son, standing at the window turned to look at me, and within minutes that phone rang again. The words were painful to my ears.

“I am sorry, we just cant do anymore. Her heart won”t start pumping on its own. We will be out in a few minutes.” My face and tears told everyone in the room what the verdict had been. The aortic dissection had won. My mother had died. My mind could not comprehend those words! My beautiful mother had died. Never again would I hear her sweet voice on the phone., or see her toddling across the street to my house with a rhubarb cake and a smile on her face. Or hear her laugh as we played word games around the table.

Robotically, I called who I needed to. Her sister, my brother and sister who were still hours away. The surgeon came out to talk to us. He looked so tired, and I wept as he knelt by my father and told him he was sorry he couldn’t do more. I kept hoping I was in a bad dream, but the reality of it felt more like a nightmare. I wasn’t ready for this!

Just hours ago she wanted me to bring her purse to the hospital and be sure her kitty had food and water! When I left to do those duties, I never thought that would be our last conversation.

Then a kind woman in a soft, pale yellow sweater appeared and asked if we would like to see my mom. Of course we do! I want to see my mother now!

The swinging door creaked as we shuffled into the small room. In the center was a white sheet covering all but my mothers head and her lower arms and hands. Her beautiful hands. I held them, still warm and soft as I always knew them to be. Memories of those hands stroking my head as a child, hands teaching me to play the piano, hands cradling my own children, and hands that were there for 3 great-grandchildren. Hands that folded in prayer to the God she loved and was now in the presence of. I nestled my face in her hair, never wanting to lose her scent, never wanting to leave that room. For 53 years, she had been there for me. She was my first love, she taught me how to love, she taught me how to live. As tears fell on the white sheet, I kissed her lifeless face good bye, and I knew what a broken heart felt like. I was part of her, and the pain of our earthly separation was deep.

Then the battle began within me. How could I want her back to this life on earth when she was now in the presence of the Lord? Verses she had taught me as a child battled with the reality of the rest of my life being without her? Was I selfish? What was wrong with me?

I wish I could say it took a few days to rejoice for her home going. But for eleven years the battle goes on. Jesus said to the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in Paradise”…”To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” I do rejoice for her, even on the days I smell a honeysuckle bush and tears come to my eyes as it reminds me of her. Or the days I see the familiar handwriting on a birthday card from years ago and the sting of tears reappear. The grief is not as painful, but it still washes over me at times. Her absence seems to scream at times, and other times her presence is with us. My children and grandchildren are all a little part of her.

I have come to accept that the real tragedy would have been if I did not have the relationship with my mother that I had. The relationship that makes me miss her because I loved her so, and I knew she loved me. And my tears are temporary. Someday it will be me under the white sheet, but it will be only the lifeless body that my soul once lived in. I will be rejoicing in the presence of the Lord with my mother and all who have gone before me.

This is the mystery of time. Ecc. 3:2 says there is an occasion for every activity under heaven; a time to give birth and a time to die.” This is the common thread of all humanity. We rejoice at the birth and mourn the loss. As I stand at the cemetery headstone of my mother, and look across the hill at all the graves, I imagine the tears moistening the ground at each grave, tears of loved ones mourning the one to go before them. Yet through all of time, this has been the sure thing for each of us, a time to be born and a time to die. Let us all be mindful to be prepared for that time to die, as the Lord is the only one who knows that day.