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 16th 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.
