A Story of Death and Hope

I am taking a course in faith and theology with the Aquinas Institute as part of a sponsorship program of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. A number of us are being prepared with the theological and spiritual background to more deeply understand the charism of our institutions and help it to grow in our organizations. One of the activities of this first course was to write a 15-minute reflection on one of four topics. I chose the topic "death and hope." Since I have had a few recent experiences of friends who have had family members die, I thought I would share my story in this blog.

We always thought it would be my dad who died first. He had the bad heart and high blood pressure. He had two by-pass surgeries and an angioplasty, but that's not always the way it works.

We were surprised when my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and it was declared a stage four. The tumors had spread throughout her body and her abdomen had tens of thousands of tiny tumors, like grains of sand. Mom was a fighter and a strong woman of faith if anyone could beat this, she could.

Fast forward two years later. Mom's in her final stages of life. She is at home with around-the-clock hospice care. Her bed is set up in the family room – the place where the card games and social life of the family always occurred. While she was mostly unconscious, she still was in the midst of her family. As she lay there, we did what we always did: played cards, laughed, and joked with each other as if the clock had been rolled back and we were all teenagers again. My sister and brothers and I were there with our dad and our mom together in that family room in Bowie, Maryland.

The deathwatch had begun and what we thought would be a few short days spanned into 22. She survived 22 days without food or water, only the morphine drip. For eight of them we were all there. It was the best family gathering we had in years. For the few lucid moments mom had each day, she was surrounded by her family just as she remembered it at the best of times.

I think that's what made it hard for her to let go, despite our hopes and prayers that she would finally be free from the pain and go home to God. While the pain must have been unbearable, the pull of her family must have been stronger still.

Finally, after an eight-day vigil, we all had to go back to our lives. We said our good byes and made our separate ways back to our homes in various parts of the country, knowing that the next time we would gather would be for her funeral.

No sooner had we gotten home, then we got the call – mom had died. She just couldn't go when we were all together as we used to be. Our leaving allowed her to do the same. As I reflect on those eight days though, it was we who were the better for having spent them together. Her passing was the opportunity to rekindle the importance of family.