“ Living on the Corner of Gratitude and Joy ”

I don’t know the appropriate way to say this online.  People need to know …but it’s kind of like leaving bad news on an answering machine, I know—so I’m just going to say it. 

 

My mom died this past Tuesday. 

 

Since so many of my friends and colleagues are online and so many of you have been a part of her journey and our journeys as of late, especially—it seemed appropriate, if not urgent to say it out loud here.  Mom died on Tuesday. 

If this seems odd, I confess I have sometimes struggled with the appropriate conventions of news-telling.  Mom’s answer, in times of need, was always to call the police, and task them with finding someone in order to deliver urgent news (ask dad about the APB she had out on him after he left for a meeting).  That’s not exactly how I like to operate, so in my first call, when answering machines were somewhat new, when I kept coming home to a series of “clicks” which I knew to be someone calling but “hanging up,” and learning that ladies in my congregation felt it improper to ever leave “bad news” as a recorded message, I took matters into my own hands and made an announcement during Church the next Sunday:

“Some of you are apparently afraid to leave word that someone’s died on my answering machine.  But please do!  I don’t mind, I won’t find it odd, and I won’t hold it against you; but you will probably be unhappy if you schedule a funeral, and the preacher doesn’t show up!  All you have to do is wait for the beep and say, “Hi David, its me.  Please call me back.” 

That very next week, someone did just exactly that.  They called, and after the beep was this: “Hi David, it’s me.  Please call me back.”  …And for a moment there was much rejoicing!  My plan had worked!  They did exactly what I said! 

Oh dear!  …and it took me not quite an hour to figure out I had no idea who “it’s me” was! 

So, in another week, we got that fixed; too.  In the meantime, the Funeral Director was all business—“Hi David, this is Jeff over at the funeral home, Jean Upshaw died and the family would like to know if the funeral could be scheduled for the 16^th at 11am at the church.”  

 

My mom died on Tuesday.  And for much of the ten days prior, she was almost always accompanied by my dad, my sister, and me.  We observed together that this was one of the hardest things; and yet, somehow, one of the best things. 

I’m sad that my mother’s voice is no longer in this world.  I am.  And like the winners of “Wait! Wait! Don’t tell me,” I wish I could still have her voice on my answering machine!  But I’ve found myself now moved to the corner of Gratitude Street and Joy Avenue in a way that was unimaginable to me, before.  Even as a child of God and a child of two church-going and church-leading parents whose spent his whole life in the arms of ministry, I’m not sure I could have known it the way I do now.  I’ve had no trouble believing and proclaiming it, sharing the news with so many …of death and resurrection, an end to suffering, the certainty of God’s love—trying to speak some of the things I’m now feeling—I’d just never truly known how fully these feelings overcome whatever measure of unknowing or un-assuredness we all seem to carry about death, or the sadness we fear will forever accompany us, too, in the way I’ve experienced it, now. 

We had hoped against hope that skilled medical care could release mom from her bondage to ailments over these last few weeks.  We presumed, some time ago that another trip to the emergency room surely led to restoration, or at least a different form of still life’s journey in this world.  And it was a shock to my being that after weeks of wearing the path to “better” out, hearing that mom admitted out loud that she was dying.  I still don’t know what you’re supposed to feel when a parent or a loved one says, “I’m dying.”  Let alone, what you’re supposed to say back.  I just know it sucks the wind out of your sails. 

In one moment the other day mom woke up from sleeping; when I asked her how she was, she said, “I don’t know yet Day-day, I’ve been asleep.”  I waited a bit, before asking again, and she began, “I thought I was dead!”  I’m still thinking about what I might have said different, but what spilled out of my mouth was, “are you pissed off then?”  “Boy I tell you what,” (which was one of her sayings) she said …but never quite finished her thought. 

By then, mom was spending a lot of her time sleeping.  We had learned after days of trying uncover what had gone awry in her body that at least part of her unrelenting nausea was caused by gastritis we hadn’t known about.  She’d been suffering with it so long, she’d almost stopped eating before she was presented with only the hospital food.  Not only did things not taste good anymore, but she had unpredictable bouts of throwing up after eating or drinking, and none of the tips, tricks, or pharmacological remedies seemed to give her food or drink that blessed one-way ticket.  As time wore on against her, her lack of energy was no match for what she faced; and it was marked by conversations more shortened, between longer times of sleeping. 

Once, my dad asked if she was feeling better.  “Much better,” she replied, and with some certainty.  She said, “I’ve learned that God loves me so much more.” 

Dad was devastated.  Later he said, “How could she not know God loved her?  This woman, growing up in a strong Lutheran family, it’s my fault she even became a Presbyterian …she did that for me, but still, how could she not know….”  “No,” I said, “you didn’t hear her.  …So much more, dad.”  So much more.  “Not unloved, just more than she thought.  It’s good.  Even better.” 

On Tuesday morning, she was even brightened.  “How are you feeling, Mom?”  “So much better than the other night, when I thought I was dying!” she said.  As if issuing a decree of reversing course.  

It had seemed to me that mom had been taking little trips, like a toddler who slips the comfortable boundaries of the parent, who gets to the edge and looks back to see if she’d gone too far.  And each successive trip seemed to be a little farther.  And then, almost as if she knew two places that were both good to be, or maybe she kept coming back to make sure WE were O.K. 

And I believe I know the moment when she left us, slipping the shackles of her broken body, leaving us the reminder that it was no longer needed or required, and only her mortality traveled with us, from there.  But she, like Jesus we’re told, was gone. 

For so many days before I had described Hope as an unruly woman (that’s my polite language) as dragging and kicking us where we did not want to go; but in the end it was indeed and unruly Hope introducing us each to gratitude and joy.  My dad told us that he had awakened on Tuesday brokenhearted because mom’s spirit would be no more in this world.  But he had realized when he saw mom again, that this wasn’t true—rather, in particular each of us, and also others had been given her spirit and that she had been teaching us her whole life, preparing us …even for hard things.  “Always try your best,” mom told me—even with things you don’t know how to do.” 

Somehow, all the lasts of everything had not led us to feel empty or our loss; rather, we found in ourselves completeness, and abundant gratitude for what we had received.  We were not empty, at all; but filled.  We were not walking with sadness only, but hand in hand with joy.  And deeply, deeply, grateful to God. 

But it began leaking out in funny ways. 

We were in the middle of dinner, or nearly, when mom began breathing her last.  And you have to know, that most of my life—even the last day I was with mom at her house—that most every time the phone would ring, mom would always announce her “fake phone answer.”  Ring-ring.  And mom would say, “Stipp’s Mortuary.  You stab ‘em we slab ‘em.”  …And almost always when we were in the middle of eating dinner!  Then she’d pick up the receiver and say, “Stipp’s residence.” 

The nurse came and asked if we had a funeral home.  We said, “yes” without snickering.  When we were asked to call them, my sister said to my dad, “I’ll call them, but YOU have to tell me what to say.”  But I said, “you already know what to say, don’t you.  …Tell them, ‘Mortuary, this is the Stipp’s.  We stabbed her, you slab her!” 

But that was only after my perfect brother-in-law, had shown up with dinner.  Mom wasn’t supposed to have been dead yet.  Apparently, it was enough to see that the table was set.  And in the bag, were cookies from the bakery.  Yes.  Already.  You know it!  Halloween-themed …tombstones and ghosts.  #momgone

We ate them in celebration.  And my sisters says, if we weren’t already all going to hell, we sure are now! 

And I suppose, the day may come when I find not just comfort and joy playing pleasantly in my backyard, but that I’ll surely discover the sting of death has creeped over the fence unwantedly to scare the serenity out of my beautiful garden.  But like I trust we will see her again, my voice says gladly, “Not yet!”  My smile is not painted on over sadness—no, it’s real; and this feeling of gratitude seems deep and abiding. 

Oh, I suspect I may vacation now and again, but I’m now living at the corner of Gratitude and Joy; and somehow, I’ll always find my way home. 

 

I do hope you can come visit.  And I’ve heard from someone just recently on good authority …there’s room in the subdivision for you, too.