A Sacred Journey with My Mother
I came to Florida to live with my mother in January when she began her first chemo treatments. Last December she was diagnosed with class 4 lung cancer. The Dr. never gave her a time limit and she never asked how much more time she had to live. She never complained or lamented about her situation. She was simply and quietly focused on living each day as best she could. She loved to start her day reading the newspaper and doing her crossword puzzle. Her diet became very simple, but she still had some favorite foods. Some nights all she wanted for dinner was an ice cream sundae. And so we both had ice cream sundaes. I told her, “We’re in Florida, we can do whatever we want.” She laughed and said, “That’s right.”
Even when she was getting sick from her chemo treatment, she said “I am so blessed.” She felt it meant she was getting better. She always felt she was in the process of building up her strength, not that she was dying. She never discussed death. She said many times, “I am not going to die”. She spoke the truth. Who dies?
On July 18th, I watched her body breathe its last breath, but I did not watch my mother die. After that last breath, I sat on the patio outside her room at the hospice house and watched the sun rise. As I felt the warmth and the light envelope me, I also felt my mother very much alive. Life is sacred and life is eternal. Her life is the love that lives on in our hearts and will never die.
Even in the hospice when she could barely speak, she said, “I am so blessed.” Everyone in the family, including my father, with whom she has been divorced for 26 years, came to spend this last week with her. They always remained friends and he said this was just as hard on him as if they were still married. We are so grateful to our parents for forgiving each other and putting aside their differences so that we could remain a unified family even though they were no long living together.
This is love. Is it not love that matters most? Love is all we take with us and all that we leave behind. Love is what fills this room right now. We have truly created a sacred space as we come together to honor and celebrate her life and our lives together. This is her parting gift to us.
This quote from the film Don Juan deMarco sums it up beautifully:
“There are four questions of value in life…
What is sacred?
Of what is the spirit made?
What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for?
The answer to each is the same. Only love.”
In conclusion, I’d like to share this excerpt from a sermon given by Scott Holland, Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, at St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1910.
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
