what started as liner notes from a sermon but turned into thoughts on dying well and a tribute to my momma, who, in fact, did just that

Death.

It is the absolute only guarantee in our lives.

And that sounds morbid to some.  But it’s also true.

Last Sunday’s sermon centered on dying well.  And the idea that the ability to die well is a direct result of having lived well.

Immediately I started writing around the margins of my notes.  (It’s funny how you can sometimes hear your own sermon while everyone in the room is hearing another one.)

When I think of death, there’s just this one person I think of.  Of course.  My mother.

My momma.

A woman who suffered so well.

Which is a terribly odd and kind of painful statement to make.

My momma suffered well.

With so much grace.

So much simple selfless beauty.

I keep remembering the scarves that she crocheted right before she passed away.  Prepping Christmas presents and living in the present herself.  On her bed in the hospital room (and how I wish she could have passed away at home) she is telling me where the Christmas presents are and what to do with what and where and how and I guarantee I didn’t listen or follow directions as well as I wanted to because it all hurt so much to hear.  It was all too heavy to carry.

And she is there – lying down – and knowing she wouldn’t be getting back up and she’s offering instructions and I can barely breathe and neither can she and our reasons are just so vastly different for both and I can’t think about scarves and I can’t think about my toddlers growing up without grandma and I can’t think of all that has been with her and all that will be without her and how in the world will I remember which closet shelf is home to the scarves and which one should go to which grandchild .

My mom smiled at her nurses.  She cared for them.  My goodness – she asked their stories as she was clinging to her own last breaths and final goodbyes and she is asking a nurse to tell her about herself and that nurse does and my mom – my mom listens and asks and prays for her and it still stings up in my eyes and in my throat and it makes my fingers fly across the keys as I think about that day – all those days – nine years ago this very season  and I know with all my being that my momma suffered well.  She died well.

She left here on earth well with a kind of glory that I don’t think I know how to reach entirely.

She had an unspeakably generous spirit.  This was always true but seldom more evident than during those last days in Montana in a hospital room where none of us planned to gather but there we were – sons and daughter and son-in-law and daughters-in-law and grandsons and granddaughters and doctors and strangers.

On her lips was praise for other people.

I remember – so painfully I remember  – her being grateful and glad for me that I had an Oma – a Sally – who would help me and be a kind Oma to my children and my heart nearly burst then as it nearly does now when I tried to say so much to her – to say that yes, Oma is wonderful and I am grateful but I want you Mom.  I want you and I want you and I want noone else. I’m glad for what I have but I want you.  And I want you to know that I want you and that you are not replaceable and I don’t want you to die thinking that you are and how on earth can I say all these words to you in this moment when I don’t even know how to breathe and to hold your hand and to listen to you ask for ice chips and chapstick and to know you can’t even eat or drink the smoothies we keep making with the most expensive list of super health foods and vitamins and unpronounceable words and the plasma we are donating and the way we would all literally cut off our own body parts to heal yours and yet none of it is working.  None of it.  Not a bit of it and yet you’re telling me to love someone else and I just want you to know that you are enough to be mourned for. I’m honored to mourn because I’m so glad you are my momma and I’ll take this miserable hurt if it meant I got to have you as my momma for all those good and hard growing up years that it’s a wonder any of us survived.  But we did and we are here and I’m holding your hand and I just don’t want to be anywhere else.

The greatest honor of my life was to sit in your room in Billings, Montana with my father and know that when you died well, when you crossed from this life to that life that you were not alone.  You were not alone.  I don’t know exactly how the circumstances dictated that it was me and you and dad but that’s what it was and I am so grateful and I’d sit up all night with you – days on end – again and again and again. And I am so proud of the way you lived and I am so proud of the way you died.

You were prepared to pass well because you spent your life living well and there’s a special kind of beauty in that right there and I’d like to be lots more like you and lots less like me.

And I remember the holding on and the whispering in your ear – and I think you were listening –
“Momma, you can let go.  You can let go.”

Because you were trying so hard to hold on because you loved us so well.

You lived straight forward and clear cut and with love and empathy and an embrace.

And it’s not that death is romantic or glorious.

It is not.

It’s a fight too.

You fought so well and so bravely and so well,

so much how you lived.

And in so many ways that very life was the preparation for that very death and I’d say it is all honor – to be your daughter.