Mother's Last Day

On the night my mother died, I lay in bed and wept—not so much

in grief, but in thanks for all the marvelous gifts she had given to enrich

and sustain my life. Mom planted many beautiful seeds in me—

seeds for which I am and will be eternally grateful. But of all the

gifts she gave and all the seeds she planted, I believe her love for

reading in general, and for reading God’s Word in specific, were by

far the best.
 

We had celebrated Kathryn Marie’s seventy-sixth birthday in the

hospital with cupcakes the day after she broke her hip. We blessed

her and prayed with her when she decided to have the surgery,

knowing her frail body might not survive, but knowing that spending

the rest of her life in bed wasn’t what she wanted either.

We laughed when, prior to the operation, the doctor asked, “Do

you want us to attempt any extraordinary measures if something

should happen during surgery and your heart should stop?” When

Mom asked what the doctor meant, he said, “Do you want us to

pound on your chest?” She thought for a moment, scratched her chin

and replied, “Oh, maybe just a little. But don’t go to any trouble.”

Mom always had such a great sense of perspective. And humor.

And direction. And faith. She knew where she was going. If she lived,

she lived to the Lord, and if she died, she died to the Lord. As far as

she was concerned, whether she lived or whether she died, she would

be just fine.
 

We kissed, cried and prayed when Mom went into surgery. We

cried and prayed again when she came out of the operating room

wearing a full-faced oxygen mask but didn’t wake up. We waited and

prayed and hoped against hope as her kidneys began to shut down.

We pleaded with her to open her eyes and say her goodbyes when her

grandchildren came into the room. We held our breath when her

eyes fluttered open one last time to see them, and we thought we

sensed a faint smile on her parched lips.

Then, one week and a day from her sterile cupcaked birthday

party, we said our goodbyes and stood at the bedside as they took

her off life support.

Download On the Night My Mother Died 

from the book "Holding Your Family Together"