katie

I have a friend who is going through a personal health crisis. That is always tough. Somehow, it is more than frightening to consider our lives and think of it interrupted by necessary treatment. It is also frightening to consider our own mortality and such events always bring us to thinking about that. More often than not, that is not the result, but I suppose it does no good to remind someone of that when they are facing uncertainty.

What do you say to someone in such circumstances? How can you help when their future is uncertain? Well, I think that the best anyone can do is to just offer to be there. Offer to listen when they are afraid and need to talk – anytime of the day or night. Maybe you cannot literally ‘hold their hand’, but it is not so hard to listen and do it in a figurative sense.

I do not think that telling them to ‘buck up’ and think of those who have it worse is any consolation. I do not think exhorting them to ‘not think about it’ or ‘keep busy’ is really going to work, or make them feel much better. After all, it is their life and their health, their ability to engage in all the activities of daily life and their continued existence of which we are speaking. Those are not trivial things.

I think – I hope my friend has some connection with God or something that is recognized as a higher power than just fate and chance. I always find that helpful when I am experiencing a crisis. Somehow, I just feel safe knowing that everything that happens has a purpose and that whatever befalls me is just part of what will ultimately make me the woman I am going to be. I do not think we ever pass through any dark places in life without their being light at the end. If we muster up the best that is in us (and I know he has that ability), we usually come out better, tempered by the fire. It may not be a pleasant experience, but that is c’est la vie, isn’t it?

It does not do much good to wonder why something bad happens to us, either. Although that invariably is one of our first reactions, it is not a place to linger. Bad things do happen to good people every day. It is not some ‘punishment’ for something we did, it’s just nature. None of us has any guarantee in life that we will escape its hardships or pain. Remembering that always helps put into perspective whatever trial I must face.

I think I want to tell my friend that I’m always there to listen. I will listen to you rant, roar, moan and groan – but I will not let you wallow in it. That is not the place for such a one as you. You are going to get through that stage and do what you must. You are going to face that and every step you take on this journey they same way you have faced what brought you along until now, with courage, with dignity and with serenity – because I know you have all that in you. You are not going to quit or give up on what you must do. You will not be alone, you see. You have family, friends and acquaintances who will be right there with you and keeping you strong.

You are going to take one day at a time, one hour at a time if you have to. Sometimes, that is all any of us can do, to do what we must.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from my Pa. He had this little quip – author unknown that he always used:

“Each week has three days about which we should feel no worry, anxiety, distrust, or apprehension.

The third day is today. The battles of one day can be won, but if we add the burdens or yesterday and the fears of tomorrow, we will likely stumble and fall. It is not the experiences of today that drive men mad, but rather the bitterness and remorse of yesterday coupled with the fears and anxieties of tomorrow. “

I’m not a fortune teller. I cannot tell your future. Part of me wants to wish that you did not have to walk this path, but that is cheating you of a part of your life. If there is anything I have learned about life, my friend, it is that we cannot escape or avoid things, we just have to make up our mind to muddle through somehow. How we do that is what makes us individuals, what gives us the opportunity for growth.

So, the very best I can do for you as a friend is to promise to listen to you, to acknowledge your feelings, to help you get past, through, over or around whatever trials you must face and to keep you in my thoughts and prayers. So, here is an Old Irish Blessing for you. In the words of the late John O’Donohue, ” A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal and strengthen. It is a gracious invocation where the human heart pleads with the divine heart. When a blessing is invoked, a window opens in eternal time. “

Last edited by katie on October 20, 2009, 5:47 pm

In my life, I always set three goals: to be honest, to have courage and to be free.

Sometimes, I wonder if one can always can live present in all three, or if they rise and fall in one like the tide. Maybe I am only deluding myself, using that as an excuse for not ever feeling that I have mastered the art of living present in those attributes.

I figure that all other things in life, success, achievement, contentment, et al depend upon them. I’ve known some, but I’ve also experienced moments in the dark of night when I was lost and did not feel any of them – I felt trapped, frightened and a sham. No matter how many times I try to climb back out of the abyss, it’s so disheartening to reach the mountaintop and find out that the climb has just begun.

I know that life is not supposed to be easy or simple, although I know that some have mastered it well enough to be free and easy and live simply. Somehow, that eludes me. I’ve been told that I over-think or over-complicate some things. Perhaps I do. I try to ‘see’ what is there and ‘hear’ what gets said – I do this because I want to understand, to really understand everything. I don’t want to free fall through life without comprehending the space around me on my trip.

I want to understand because I don’t want to feel confused or be consumed with a stilted opinion of life that clings to old notions taught in childhood without leaving room for the changes that happen every day in the world. I want to love life and the world, and not judge it and be revolted by it.

Once, I put everything about my life into neat little compartments. That way each had it’s place and I made a practice of not letting any two of them be opened at the same time – sort of like a Pandora’s box of secrets. Why did the right hand need to know what the left one was doing, after all? That elminated confusion and it also got complicated because I had to always be checking and rechecking my precious little boxes. It was a habit that served me well for a long time.

In an effort to abandon that practice which eventually becomes way too hard to keep up and is really dishonest in itself, I started writing. That was my way of opening the boxes and throwing away the lids – no more stuffing anything back down, no more hiding, no more secrets, no more walls. That was tough, I’ll admit. It made me step back and look at each and somehow, accept things about myself and make peace with them.

Without even realizing it, I think I stumbled again. I fell back into a habit of classifying, categorizing and segregating. . . here we go again. Before, I was dancing as fast as I could and still could not keep up – what made me think I could do that again? As the saying goes, though – “Old habits die hard. “

Unless you count the sin of omission, I am honest. I won’t lie about anything to anyone for anything. But, I still haven’t mastered the omitting, the leaving out of what I wanted hidden. That’s not honest and I know it.

I’m not sure how much courage I really have. I remember once getting an award that touted my “courage ” and feeling so small and so unworthy because ’twas not my own courage. I had only ‘borrowed’ it, been imbued with the courage of those who so many thought of as ‘less than’. Their courage to just make it through another day bouyed me up and made me at least feel brave enough to do what I had to do each day. Now, I’m not so sure of myself – if I have any courage at all, it’s the that when in the midst of fear, I find a way to whistle in the dark and keep putting one foot in front of the other. But, I want to be fearless – to have the courage to operate absent of fear and I wonder now if I shall ever reach that goal.

I know I’m not free. I was once – so free that nothing could touch me or shackle me or hold me down and out in any way. That was before I got lost. I thought just finding my way out of there would set me free – that if I could escape from one thing, that would guarantee my freedom. Wrong again. Sometimes, we build the walls of our own prisons and we make them high and wide. That must be in an effort to protect ourselves, I suppose. There’s no way to do that. I learned that and then somewhere along the line, I guess I forgot. Walls are for keeping people out and for keeping people in and neither spell freedom. Freedom is no more walls at all.

I look back at my greedy little hands grabbing at one or all of these things that I want so badly and realize that you cannot just reach out and grab a handful of any of them, much less all of them. You can only hope to live in their presence – to strive for them in your life. I know that life is a journey and not a destination and so I suppose that’s okay, but one day, I still hope to live with all three present in my life.

Meanwhile, I suppose I’ll have to do what one always does when one stumbles and falls down – just pick myself up and start over again. Well, there’s no dignity in falling – that’s for sure, but if anything comforts me, its that I can and I will get up again and I won’t lose sight of what I want, nor will I abandon the dream because once, if only for a brief while, I caught a glimpse of what life was like with all three and that sliver of light is imprinted not only in my mind, but in my heart.

Mushy Squishy was nothing like its name led you to believe – although it desperately wanted to be a soft and lovable toy – a really mushy squishy thing. It longed to take any shape you wanted it to – I guess it aimed to please. It thought that the more it let you poke and prod and squeeze and make demands upon it – the more mushy and squishy it would become. Its attempts at compliance usually evoked squeals of delight from the ones who were trying to mush and squish it. They seemed to like having such power over the toy.

Funny thing about mushy squishy. Once, it had a mind of its own, it couldn’t be bent, shaped, prodded or beaten into any shape but the one it decided. It was hard and cold and not at all mushy squishy. Years went by and the toy stayed that way. People knew that you had to play with it on its own terms – it wouldn’t bend, not even just a bit. Rain, sleet, hurricanes – nothing could change it. It just kept on putting one foot in front of the other woodenly and doing what it had to do – what everyone expected of it – being hard, fast, true and reliable. It was of use – everyone knew they could count on it for something or another.

After so many years of being of use, mushy squishy got the idea that maybe it could be like the other toys – fun, beloved, wanted. So, it started to bend just a little. Here and there – every once in a while. This was met with renewed efforts by all who played with the toy to make it even more mushy squishy. In turn, that only egged mushy squishy on. One of the others – it called to mushy – “keep trying, you can do it…believe – you are going to make it – I’m right here pulling for you and I can’t wait for you to be all mushy squishy. Have faith in me.”

“Maybe I can really fit it with them – maybe I can be just like the rest, if only I can find a way in me to be more pliable, to bend more, to give them what they want and expect from a toy, ” Mushy thought. So mushy squishy redoubled its efforts to stretch, snap, squish, push, fold, bend and otherwise be all pliable and ‘mushy squishy’. This took plenty of faith from mushy squishy, who had been so scared that there wasn’t any place in the world for any such a toy to fit in and who wasn’t accustomed to bending at all. Each new move took more and more ‘believing in’, ‘hoping for’ and then ‘putting into action’. But mushy squishy would not be deterred. “Maybe dreams do come true, even for the likes of me,” thought Mushy. “I’ve read about such – seen some of it in movies, but I never thought it would pertain to me. Oh, my – this is just too wonderful to be true!”

And it was. It was too wonderful to be true. It was a lie. Toys that aren’t meant to fit it shouldn’t try and things that are of use should be content with that and when you are rigid, you should just accustom yourself to that fact – that’s how it is and that’s how it always will be. Trying to be all mushy squishy only will make you into nothing … didn’t anyone notice that in all the frenetic efforts to become mushy squishy, the toy kept losing bits and pieces of itself along the way? Parts broke off all along that path and littered it with little bits of the toy that weren’t really hard, but surely weren’t special – not really mushy squishy and only broken off parts in the end – nothing that was ‘of use’ to anyone. Just like that egg in the other nursery rhyme, no one could put what was left of the toy back together so that it might be of use. Since it was no longer of use and now all broken, and not at all mushy squishy, no one wanted it anymore and it went the way of the scrap heap – never having known what it was like to really be mushy squishy.

I believe I have mentioned in passing, my great-grandfather, aka as “Dock”. From all that I ever heard or read about him, he was one of those men who stands apart from the rest. I imagine they called him Dock because Augustus Cicero was, well – more than a mouthful, if you know what I mean. Dempsey III and Elizabeth (his parents) must have had an affinity for Roman emperors to have labeled their little new-born son with such a moniker.

He’d come from a family who had migrated to the United States in 1682 from the mountains of Wales and settled in Virginia, around Richmond. From there, they had traveled to Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. They had fought in the Revolution, the war of 1812, the Mexican-American War and also the Civil War. During the Creek Indian Wars, there are record of Dempsey and Elizabeth securing a ‘passport’ to travel through the lines on their journey to Mississippi where they finally settled in Copiah Country.

Now, this family did not come to American ‘gentrified’.The records indicate that the first one to settle here was a brick mason. He earned his living on his own and later with the help of his sons and yes, finally slaves . Dock grew up on a plantation in Copiah Country – that is true, and in the census records, it indicated Dempsey as one of the larger slaveholders in Mississippi at the time of the war. On the other hand, there are also records to indicate that from the first settler of this family on down, each generation had taught the trade of brick masonry to not only all their own sons, but all of their slaves so that they all would have a skilled trade in addition to farming the land.

Learning was also a much valued thing in this family – all of the children and there were 15 – were well educated. Dock had served in the Civil War and returned home.

I don’t know if he was always that way, if it was a result of the war, or just happened as he got older, but he was pretty near stone deaf, according to what my Pa told me of him. He and his wife, who was descended from a family of preachers…well – they moved on to Louisiana after the war. The piece of land the bought in North Louisiana was purchased from some interesting folk – one of the family names was Davis – a fellow named Jefferson Davis and his neice. Yes, that one – the same one who was the president of the Confederacy.

Now, Dock was descended from men who were described as ‘long, tall drinks of water’ – meaning they were tall and lanky. In pictures of them, you see the ice blue eyes, the high cheekbones and the prominent, aquiline nose. When they referred to Dock as ‘short’ therefore, I imagine that it only meant he was somewhere under six foot tall – that being the median for all the others.

Dock settled into the life of gentleman farmer. He also had learned to be a blacksmith and practiced that trade. Additionally, they had a small country store in walking distance between the house and the blacksmith shop, which was in a large barn on the banks of the bayou.

He and Eliza had thirteen children and reared thirteen more who had been orphaned after the deaths of varied other family members.

You must remember that this story takes place before they obtained electricity on the place and so oil lamps or candles were needed to light the dark. Dock kept going into the store and noticing the evidence of a rat – a big one. This caused him great displeasure, as he liked his store to be spic and span. Evidence of a rat chewing into any of his wares was not only bad for business. – but might believe to lead some people that he was slovenly in nature and did not attend to such matters in a timely fashion. He would have none of that.

He put out traps several times. Each time, he returned and the cheese was gone, but alas – there was no rat. This caused Dock to unleash some fiercely unpleasant oaths. ( I have it on the best authority that he was renowned for the way he could cuss and swear. Not only was he partial to epithets such as sumbitch and hot damn – but lily livered and banty-legged when describing an adversary).

Dock was growing more and more impatient with this rat. He finally decided to stay in the store one evening with the lamp turned down low. That way, he thought, he could study the intruder and it’s habits and thereby determine the best placement of the traps to guarantee that the rat would soon receive dispatch from this earth most expeditiously.

Dock sat there for several evenings without seeing the rat – perhaps it spotted him first and laid low. On this night, in the dim light of the lantern, he had vowed to stay awake all night long if that was what it would take to spot his nemesis. So, there say Dock – sitting and waiting and watching.

Suddenly, he thought he was aware of something. As he was so hard of hearing, he could not hear the rat scratching and poking into the various wares, looking to see what items he would feast upon this night. Finally, Dock saw the intruder as it nibbled at various items in the store. This vexed Dock something fierce. It was all he could do to remain still and quiet himself instead of going after the dirty little varmint with his bare hands. Somehow, he managed to keep his composure while the rat sampled his wares and then watch quietly as the rat, stuffed like an ‘ole hog, made it’s way up into the rafters of the store across an exposed beam. Dock then decided that was the best spot to place a trap – right there on the beam. The rat could not choose an angle to approach that last morsel of cheese and would have to come at the trap head on – and then, Snnnnaaap . . . be promptly executed. As the rat retired for the evening, so did Dock, content with his newly acquired knowledge of the ‘enemy’ and with a plan for dispatching the rat and ridding himself of his problem.

Towards the end of the next day, while it was still light, Dock set traps throughout the store and then took a ladder and added the final touch – the trap on the exposed beam leading to what must be the rat’s sleeping place. He was quite delighted in setting the traps as he felt confident this time would be the last. He cut himself a portion of cheese and grabbed a few crackers. These would have to be his supper – he was remaining in the store so he could watch the execution of the offending rodent.

As darkness drew nigh, Dock lit the lamp and turned the wick down low. He did not want to scare the rat away with too much light – but he surely wanted to see the product of his labors come to fruition. He took a seat in a darker area of the store on a barrel, his shotgun by in side, just in case there was an intruder of another variety. He commenced with what he knew would probably be a wait of some hours. Dock could faintly hear the tick tock of the old clock on the wall.

Just as he was slowly rubbing his eyes to ward off tiredness, he noticed activity over on the counter. Could it be? Yes – it was the enemy – the rat! He nibbled and munched and moved on to the next of Dock’s wares that would now have to be discarded. Of course, although this made Dock furious, he was able to contain himself, knowing that the proverbial hairs on the rat’s head were numbered.

He waited quietly on the barrel, leaning against the shotgun contentedly, just waiting. As the rat finished his evening meal, he made his way up toward the exposed beam. Dock could hardly contain himself now – his heart beat wildly with anticipation. As the rat made its way across the beam, Dock got so excited, he actually held his breath and could feel a burning in his lungs. The rat came upon the trap with the cheese, sniffed the cheese and then sniffed again. Dock waited, knowing the moment of truth was at hand.

That is where, as the old saying almost goes, “the best laid plans of rats and men often go astray.” That rat sniffed the cheese in the trap indecisively a few times and then started to turn away – almost like he was going to make a u-turn. Doc had to steal a quick breath at this point. He wondered if all his plans were about to fail. Then, he saw the rat stop half way around making his turn, raise his leg like a dog and urinate on the cheese.

This was too much for Dock to take! This was war! I don’t know if he was giddy because of holding his breath, crazed at having his carefully laid plan ruined, or just plain mad as an ‘ole wet hen, but Dock turned loose with a steady stream of the vilest of cuss words while simultaneously raising his shotgun and cocking back both barrels. There was a demonic smile on Docks face as he pulled both triggers, unloading both barrels into the rat- and the roof of his store.

Now, of course, Dock was stuck with the consequences of his actions. He had to clean up the mess and repair the roof temporarily that night before he could go home. However, I have heard that there was never any evidence of another intrusion by a rat in his store – nor any other kind of intruder, once that story got out. But the family always tells of how Dock went to sleep a happy man that night – or one should say- in the wee hours of the morning – because, as he told it later on, he had not been outsmarted by any sumbitchin’ rat!

8-10Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled. The Bible – 1 Corinthians 13:8-9

Having been brought up as a protestant Christian, I learned this scripture verse – the entire chapter when I was about eleven years old. I always thought it beautiful, but I don’t think I fully understood the significance of it until many years later.

My Pa had gotten cancer of the prostate. It had started with skin cancers and then progressed internally. The treatments were really tough – both chemotherapy and radiation – but he was a tough old bird and if some gamma rays and poison chemicals thought they would get him without a fight, they were so, so wrong. He defied the odds over and over again – stretching his fight well past ten years and finally died at the age of 76.

We all knew that he was terminal. The doctors had offered him the option of kidney dialysis when his kidneys stopped working in the hospital, but he refused. He did not want to say in the hospital – he wanted to go home – but even then, just four days before he died, I cannot tell you he was ready to let go. I knew in my heart he held on for us – the ones who would be left. He knew how hard it was going to be, and being his usual self, he desired to spare us as long as he could hold on – no matter how it made him suffer.

At the same time, I knew that – that he would go to hell and back to spare us and I was resolved to summon every ounce of strength in me to buck up and make his death a decent and peaceful one where he wanted to be – in his home.

They brought him home on a Friday and the hospice hadn’t even really had time to line up aides to come and go to help us – no matter, I said – we will do this. The nurses showed me how to give him the morphine – under his tongue for the pain. The showed me how to use swabs to soothe his dry mouth if he could not swallow. They told me to keep using washcloths to wipe down his arms and legs to make him more comfortable as the fluids from his body began to seep out of his pores. Looking back, I can almost laugh now – he took delight in pointing out spots on his legs that he said had sprung ‘geysers’. I imagine he was just beyond letting things like that worry him.

It’s funny how people get all worried about what to do with a dying person. I think it is because we are all so frightened of dying ourselves – we don’t want to see it and we don’t know how to talk about it with the person dying because it evokes too many thoughts of our own immortality. But once you know that is what is coming – there is no turning back, nothing to save the person – that they are surely going to die – somehow, if you love them, you just reach inside yourself and grab every ounce of strength you have and go forward. I can tell you now that once I had become committed to doing it, I never shed a tear – never had a moment of feeling anything about myself, or my own grief. All I could see was helping my Pa to go home in the manner he wanted to go there. It is almost as if something takes over your senses and sensibilities….like you are on some ‘autopilot’ that a power greater than you set. Only one time did I falter – I was giving the morphine and still seeing him in such agony – I didn’t know that I could bear it any more and I called the hospice nurse to tell her I had to have help. She calmly talked me down and told me to increase the dose of morphine – that would not be what was killing him now. Okay – yes, I can do this.

So we sat by his side, and talked to him while we still could. Before he had come home, I had written a letter to him to thank him for being my Pa – for everything he had done for me. I gave it to him and let him read it in front of me – I did it that way because I did not think I could keep from crying and tell him everything – and I did not want to leave anything out. I was at peace with him knowing what I felt I needed to tell him. The last hours we spent together were just in ‘being’…holding hands, doing something to try to soothe him, to ease his pain. My daughter and my son were my partners in this. The three of us pretty well went around the clock with him. My mother and sister were not very comfortable in the situation and we just let that be. It wasn’t about any one or two of us – it was about him.

The night before he died, he had gone into a coma because his kidneys had shut down. I kept talking to him, playing his favorite tunes, showing him pictures, even though his eyes weren’t open as did my daughter and my son. Probably a little after one in the morning, my daughter and I walked outside. My son was with my Pa. We were sitting outside, breathing in the cool spring air and trying to wake up. I was telling her how I was praying, trying to will it with all my energy, for my grandmother to come to my Pa and tell him it was time to go home. I knew that even though he felt strongly about staying to spare us, that if his Mother told him it was time, he would listen. He was an only child, he had loved his mother and cared for her after his father’s death and I just knew she would get him to go. Now, I never had any fears about being outside of my house at night – not right there next to the back door with a light on. Nonetheless, I had a vague sense of uneasiness. My daughter finally asked to go inside and confided to me that she felt like someone was watching her or watching us. I told her there was no one there – although I had the same feeling. I continued to feel that way when we got back into the house. The drapes were drawn, the doors locked, the lights on – but still I felt we were not alone. The three of us were the only ones left awake in the living room where my Pa was – the others were asleep.

I had been awake for about four or five days at that point. I sat down in a chair near my Pa – my daughter and son – for whom he had been like a father – were on either side of him. Several hours passed while we waited. Again, my children expressed feeling like there was someone watching us. About four thirty in the morning, I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes – again, I was trying to pray – to invoke my grandmother’s spirit – to call out to God – anything – that might work to have him hear his mother’s voice call him and allow him to let go. I think I drifted off for just a second and then I felt my daughter’s hand on my arm. She said “Mom, I think Pa is about to die”. As I sat up, I remember thinking how in the world a teenager could know that. I looked at him. Something was different – there was like an aura or something about him; he was breathing much easier than before and I told them that we must not touch him – I didn’t want us doing anything to cause him to respond to us and come back. I don’t know why I said that – it was like someone else in me was giving directions – not me. Within minutes, my poor Pa, who had been in a coma for more than twelve hours, and was slumped forward in his reclining chair, opened his eyes. He sat up straighter and looked right past us in amazement – like we weren’t even there. Then, across his face unfolded the biggest, most wonderful smile – like he was about the ask a question. I knew in my heart at that moment that he was seeing my grandma and all the others who went before him and I knew he was going. The smile lasted less than a minute – but I will never forget that look on his face. It was a kids face on the best Christmas morning they ever had – the look of a mother or father when they see their first baby – the sweet smile of grace – all rolled into one. Just as quickly as it came, it was gone and he let out his last breath. We felt a rustle of the air in the room – sort of like when someone opens and closes a door and there is a little gust of air. That little wind – it just passed right through us – not over or around – but right through us – kind of tingling like. Then, he was still. That aura was gone from around him. My daughter said ‘ Mama, is he dead?’ and I told her ‘yes’ – just to let him be for a minute. I was still afraid that we might interrupt the process, although I have no idea why I said that. We waited a couple of minutes to check his pulse. Of course, it was gone. We turned off the oxygen and just looked at each other. What all of us thought was going to be so hard – we were actually afraid that we might chicken out and try CPR on him – fears we would all fall apart – it was none of that. It was beautiful – it was beyond that – supernal. It was a glimpse into all that there is – into the great ‘I am’ – and even though we could only see it reflected in his beautiful ice blue eyes for a second – we were all certain of what we saw. The most remarkable thing was when we got up and walked outside for a minute after waking the others to give them the news. The sun was coming up in the sky – it was one of those beautiful spring mornings and the three of us just knew my Pa was looking at us standing outside his front door – dry-eyed, relieved for him, but still changed by what we just experienced. We just knew he was looking at us and he was smiling. Everything was as it was meant to be. It was right in that moment that we realized it. You know how everyone has their own unique scent? Whatever soap they use, mixed with after – shave or cologne, hair spray, etc. – but still uniquely ‘them’. We could smell my Pa just as strong as can be on our persons. We picked up our hands and started sniffing them – thinking it was just from touching him, then we smelled our clothes, our hair – everything. And then we realized – it was when we felt that little gust of wind pass through us – that is when it happened. That did not come off of me despite that I went home and showered and changed – until sometime the next day. I know I did not hallucinate or imagine it – we all had the same experience.

Those last hours with him – I would not trade for anything in this world. Do you realize how precious it is to share that – when life comes into this world and when it leaves? I count myself as a lucky woman – I’ve been there for both. I know now that nothing can ever make me fear death – nor believe that it is an ‘end’. It’s not even a door – more like a thin veil from which all those on the other side can also see and commune with us – if we allow it – if we can be still enough to let it happen. I know there are many written accounts of experiences with the dying – all of them talk about this kind of thing. I don’t know of anyone who was there for someone in this way who can detail a bad experience, say they regret it, or that it made them fearful. Everyone speaks of the same peace – that sense of grace we seek our whole life – that glimpse of eternity. I did it another time when my mother died and it was just the same. There is no greater gift you can give to one who is dying, nor they to you, than to share this experience – this love between each other, between whoever you perceive God to be and all of us.

“We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
13But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. “The Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:12-13

Last edited by katie on June 20, 2009, 9:21 pm