"And they lived happily ever after" concludes many of our favorite childhood storybooks. Unfortunately, this euphoric outcome sends children an unrealistic message about the end of life and the ever after. Recently I read an email from Franklin Graham that commented on the plethora of available advice on how to live, but no one ever discusses how we're to die.
For the past few weeks I've been forced to face this very real and present issue with my 89 year-old mother. If you've read my "Life Interrupted" blog from May 25, 2010, you may remember that my mother had a massive stroke three days after Mother's Day and couldn't speak or swallow. At the time, my other three siblings agreed that in order to give her a fighting chance to recover we would have a gastric feeding tube inserted for a period of time. She pulled that G-tube out three times! We got the message. Soon she was swallowing applesauce and other soft foods, and eventually her healthy appetite returned. All four of us feel very fortunate to have had this very loving and Christ-like woman in our presence for an extra year-and-a-half as we prepared for the inevitable end of her life. This past summer we moved Mom into a "Board and Care" residence very near my home and I try to visit her every day to agree in prayer, but usually after completing my blog on Mondays.
Last Monday when I would normally have been writing my weekly blog, Mom seemed very close to taking her final breath. Because of her continual atrial fibrillation, she was experiencing chest pain and couldn't swallow the medications that are intended to slow her heart rate. My dear mother's weakened heart has been running a marathon, sometimes beating over 130 beats per minute since Thanksgiving when she became excited about sharing this day with most of the family present. Her physical body was dehydrated and growing weaker by the minute, so I spent most of last Monday at her bedside, and eventually called hospice. We prayed together and I read to her from her Bible, sang hymns and prayed some more. She kept reaching for me so I knew that she didn't want me to leave.
Kenny Chesney's country western lyrics ring true, "Everybody wants to go to heaven...but nobody wanna go now." Although my very spiritually grounded mother, who mentored many women in the Christian faith and even worked as a Christian counselor for a popular television evangelist, knows where she will go when she takes her last "breath of life," she still has a strong will to live. Mother is trying her best to swallow jello and other soft foods, but certainly not enough to sustain life. Her breathing has become a bit labored so hospice has her on oxygen to make her more comfortable in her final days and hours. We're told that our time is in God's hands, so only He knows the day and hour when my mother will take her last "breath of life." (Read Psalm 31:14-15a, KJV) Until that time arrives, I pray that I will be able to be by her side, holding her hand until she breathes her last breath and finally yokes completely with Jesus....
