Tag: death

SITTING VIGIL

It has been eight days since our 100-year old Mimi was rushed to the hospital with seizures.  The ER doctor told us she expected that Mimi would go sometime over the weekend, yet here we are, eight days later, still sitting by her bed and waiting.  The hospice nurse says that death is now imminent, but we thought that before.  This dying process is taking a long time and I am learning quite a bit in the process.  It is a lot like giving birth.  

Her type of death usually takes about four weeks, and looking back, I know when it began.  She began to withdraw from people and activities, and was eating less than her normal bird-sized meals.  Things were beginning to shut down.  There was a scary ambulance ride to the ER.  Then a CT scan revealed a large brain tumor.  We thought we would lose her within hours but she “rallied,” a word I have never associated with dying.

It was during this rally that God drew back the curtain of Heaven and gave her a sneak preview of her eternal home.  And she told us all about it.  Oh the sights she saw!  Even the hospital staff was in awe.  I will be forever grateful for that time with her.  Since then she has been mostly sleeping. 

She has been at Clarehouse since Monday, and what a blessing it is that they had a bed available.  She has a beautiful suite, but the smell of death hangs heavy.  It clings to my hair and my skin, and I wonder how long it will last.  So I moved to the deck outside her room that overlooks a creek and a copse of trees.  Occasionally a butterfly from the butterfly garden flutters by.  An owl sits in a hollow tree behind me, his nocturnal eyes closed to the bright daylight.  A light breeze blows.  In the distance I can here the sounds of cars; life goes on around us, oblivious to the eight or so people here who are transitioning from this world to the next.

I have been praying for months that God would take her peacefully in her sleep.  I guess I should have been more specific.  My idea was that she would go about her day, go to bed, fall asleep, and wake up in Heaven.  I wasn’t planning on eight days and nights of sleep!  But God is in charge and I am not.  Scripture tells us that all our days were ordained by God before we were ever conceived. He knew the day we would come into the world and He knows the day we will leave.  

People tell me that they understand that sitting vigil is hard.  Well yes and no.  There have been some hard moments, some sad moments and some long moments.  We leave for bits of time, but feel like we should come back. And when we are here we feel useless. it’s a good deal of waiting. But mostly, it is my honor to sit here with her.  She has lived a good long life.  Everyone has said their goodbyes and said what they needed to say. I am so grateful I get to spend these last hours with her. 

PUTTING THINGS IN ORDER

Last night I did something different, something I have needed to do for a long time.  Together with some of my friends I began a three-week class called “What Do I Do Now?”  It’s a class that not only gives you a great deal of information about what to do when a loved one dies, it helps you organize everything you need and get it into one place.

 

I promised myself four years ago that I would get things together because that was when Jerry suddenly became very ill and was unable to communicate.  In addition to being gravely worried about him, there were things I needed to take care of.  Life doesn’t stop when someone becomes very ill or dies.  There was information I needed from him about bank accounts, passwords, and ongoing business transactions.  I needed to access the contents of his briefcase but I didn’t know the combination.  With the help of my daughters I muddled along and happily, Jerry recovered.  I wish I could tell you I followed through on my resolution, but once the crisis was past so was the urgency to get things done. This year we have been more intentional and have made inroads, but there is still much to be accomplished.  So when this class became available I enrolled.

 

I have to tell you the first night was overwhelming.  I am surprised at my reaction, because I wanted to bolt!  The facilitator told us at the beginning of her lesson that last night would be the hardest.  “What could be so hard,” I wondered.  I’m still asking myself that question this morning.  Why was my reaction so strong?  This is just taking care of details.

 

I think it’s a combination of facing my own mortality, revisiting the possibility that I might lose my husband, all the decisions that will have to be made about what to do with my physical remains, my earthly possessions, and even my dogs.  Things I guess I am still not wanting to think about. But the harsh reality is that one day Jerry and I will die.  “Pass away” sounds so much nicer, but that’s just semantics.  We will leave this earth behind and enter into the presence of Jesus. That’s the good news.  The bad news is there will be hard things to do in the aftermath.  If I go first I want to make things easier for Jerry and my girls, so it will be helpful to have things done in advance.  And if he goes first I want to make things easier for me, so having everything in one notebook will help.

 

This year I am doing a Bible study of the book of Daniel.  Instead of approaching the book from a prophetic standpoint, our study is focusing on the sovereignty of God.  “God is in control,’ is our overarching theme.  So in my lesson this morning I was challenged to consider areas of my life that make me anxious, and write a Bible truth that corresponds to the situation.  I didn’t have to think too long.  My notebook from last night was sitting on my desk in plain view.  The verse I wrote is one of my favorites, Isaiah 41:10:

 

Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will hold on to you with my righteous right hand. (CSV).

 

I might need to tattoo that verse on my right hand.  (Don’t worry kids, I won’t!)  God’s promise brings my anxiety level way down.  It is wise to be prepared, but ultimately God is in control. He knows the road ahead of me, and He will walk it with me.     

 

 

HOW DID WE GET HERE SO SOON?

 

funeral-coffin-grave-creativ2

 

He was arguably the cutest and most popular boy in the ninth grade. He was one of those guys who was the whole package: good-looking, well liked, really nice, popular, athletic, and a real leader. One of the unattainable boys. He only dated the prettiest and most popular girls, because he could.

 

I went to a different school the next year and really haven’t thought much about him since. We were only casual friends and didn’t stay in touch. I heard he married his high school sweetheart, but other than that I never knew what happened in his life. So why was it such a gut check when I heard he passed away last week?

 

I keep thinking of the lines from the John Donne poem, “…any man’s death diminishes me.” Is that it? Of course any man’s death should diminish me. Really, the death of any creature is sad. I was reading in my quiet time this morning about how God cares for the sparrows and how He knows when even one of them falls to the ground. Jerry and I were pondering over our coffee about whether there will be sparrows in Heaven. I hope so. But I don’t think that is really what is troubling me. It’s the last line of the poem that is bothering me, the line about the bell tolling for me. And it’s not bothering me in the way Donne was intending, that when one of us dies a little piece of each of us dies. No, the part that bothers me is that my day is coming, the day when the bell will actually toll for me. And here is the crux of what bothers me. It feels way too soon!

 

It’s not that I am afraid to die, although I expect that if we are honest all of us are at least a little bit afraid. After all this is uncharted territory. We’ve never done it before. But as a Christian I know that when I die I will go immediately to be with Jesus, and I believe my eternal life will be wonderful beyond comprehension. What bothers me is that I have reached an age where death is not shocking. When one of my peers dies, no one says any more, “Oh she was too young to die.” Death is expected or at least accepted as normal for my age group. Where is the “rage against the dying of the light” that Dylan Thomas wrote about in “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night.”

 

Here’s the thing. This time of life has gotten here too soon! Ecclestases 3:2 tells us there is a time to be born and a time to die. I know that God’s timing is perfect but I’m not ready to leave this planet yet. The space between birth and where I am now seems so brief. Twenty years used to seem like a long time but now it goes by in the blink of an eye. Today we are celebrating the 11th birthday of a baby girl who was just born yesterday! Those 11 years went by in a whoosh!

 

How is it that my peers are dying off? My ninth grade memories don’t seem that far distant. I still carry a little of my 14-year old self. I don’t feel all that old! It seems that I hear of the death of a classmate almost every week now. We baby boomers are keeping that tolling bell busy, and that seems like an atrocity to me. I, for one, am raging against it! I’m not going gentle into that good night.

 

 

 

 

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