The Sound of Grace

Life keeps ticking away, and with every passing day, I am getting farther and farther away from the era during which my precious mother graced the earth. 

It’s as if life is a passenger train, with people getting off and on, the passenger list always changing, even as the train speeds forward. It feels like we left my mom at the last stop – her ride ended there, and she will never see what’s down the line…

(Of course I know that the glory she’s experiencing makes our linear train ride seem drab by comparison!) 

But a couple months ago, I saw a news story about some 1,000-year-old mummified bodies that were found in Peru, and it got me thinking about all the people in all the generations that have populated the earth over the course of time. Or, consider the lives cut short in Pompeii with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius... We once saw a museum exhibit that showed how the bodies of the people who died there were buried in the ash and decayed so that archaeologists later found cavities in the rock that were in the shapes and positions of people in their last waking moments. Those haunting images have stuck with me.

Everyone gets their allotted piece of time and place, with their own unique history and happenings and surroundings, which all inevitably shape their own experience and viewpoint and, even, their resulting impact on history. 

Out of all the souls that have lived throughout time, these are the ones (you are one) who were destined to run parallel with my own, in the same era. 

At least for a time.

***

The words “I lost my mom last July” always evoke a response of “Awww, I’m so sorry.”

It’s a conversation I’ve had multiple times, in multiple situations. But nothing in that exchange (whether my statement or the person’s expression of sympathy) adequately reflects the pain and emotions that have been experienced since “last July.” 

I know that from the outside, it sounds so normal – After all, if our life progresses the way it’s intended to, we will all lose our mothers at some point in our lives (my own mother was lucky enough to not lose hers, though; my grandmother lives on at the age of 94). But while losing one’s mother is such an everyday, universal occurrence for humankind as a whole, when it happens, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime tragedy for each individual soul.

“I lost my mom last July.” It’s just an ordinary sentence. Six little words. 

But if you listen carefully, you’ll hear all the unspoken heaviness hanging on those words. 

You’ll hear the pain of writing the obituary – reducing 73 years of living down to a few carefully worded paragraphs. You’ll hear the tears shed while choosing photos for the funeral video. You’ll hear the sound of her clothes being bundled up for donation. You’ll hear the silence of her cell phone and the sound of her husband calling to cancel the phone line. You’ll hear the awkwardness at the dinner table – in restaurants, at home, at Thanksgiving – as everyone silently acknowledges the empty seat. You’ll hear the heartache experienced while sorting through her precious things – deciding what should be kept and what else should be given away. You’ll hear the pain felt at knowing what she would say in every situation – but not getting to hear her say it. You’ll hear the hollowness of many days spent just staring into space, wondering what’s next – wondering how it’s possible to live in a world without her. And you’ll hear the unexpected times of laughter and joy and the underlying guilt for finding it’s possible to experience happiness in the midst of grief. 

It’s all unspoken, hanging in the balance. “I lost my mom last July.” “Awww, I’m so sorry.”

Nothing in that exchange adequately expresses the huge loss the world experienced when Mom drew one last ragged breath on a Saturday morning.

***

In her jewelry box, I found a beautiful bookmark – a thick satin string, with a flower charm on one end and a letter “K” charm (for “Kathy”) on the other end. I’d never seen it before the day my dad, my daughter, and I poured her jewelry out on the bed and lovingly (and tearfully) sorted through it. Ryley kept some of her grandma’s watches and necklaces and the jewelry box itself, while I kept many of her earrings and this lovely, mysterious bookmark (among other things). 

My dad did not know where the bookmark came from; and my imagination has grown wild with wanting to know its story. I like to imagine it was a high school graduation gift that she cherished all her life. I don’t know that she ever used it as it was intended, but I sure have. :-) I’ve been using it for all my books since “last July.” 

Chances are high that I will never know its origin, but it’s surprising how much comfort I draw from this tiny thing that belonged to my mother – that somehow found its way into her keepsakes.

***

There was a moment in the hospital when the suffering was so much that I made peace with the fact (as much as I could at the moment, anyway) that we would be okay without her, if only she were out of pain. 

What a strange moment of acceptance it is – to say, “Okay, yes. Death is best.” 

To acknowledge, as you watch your mother unloaded from the hospice transport ambulance and her gurney wheeled clumsily through the hot, sticky air of a Texas summer night, that this will be the last time she is ever alive in the outside air – All the cumulative hours and days and weeks and months of her life spent outdoors, and this is the last time. 

To reassure her as she’s wheeled into an old, dated room with wood paneling and a weirdly low ceiling, and then transferred to her (death) bed, “This is the last time. This is the last transfer.” 

“It is?” she asked. 

“Yes, this is it. Now you can relax,” the paramedic said. 

And I understood she would never leave that room. 

I looked at the ceiling, wondered how many spirits had departed their bodies and flown through that same ceiling (if that’s how it works?). Wondered what rooms were above us. Wondered how many people have died there – how many families have said their goodbyes. For us, hospice was 36 hours. I didn’t even have a chance to find the coffee machine in the family waiting room. How many families have cycled in and out? 

How many grieving souls have looked out that same window and also felt that the hospital was deserted, that they were very much alone? How many others have studied the road in the distance and the adjacent preschool’s playground? How many patients have departed and not had their family surrounding them?

I have always been pretty fascinated by grief and, consequently, empathetic with others in their grief  – often putting myself in their positions and letting myself feel all the feels … deeply imagining the heaviness they’re experiencing. Ryan calls it “wallowing” and has often warned me against it.

Because what I had not accounted for was God’s special grace on the griever. 

And when grieving by proxy, I was experiencing my own convoluted sort of grief that was not accurate and was absent of the wonderful grace God gives to the people who are actually in the situation itself. 

And that’s what we had. I felt a “presence” when she left us. For all its deserted hospital vibes, in the moment she transitioned to glory, I did not feel we were alone. In fact, the room felt quite crowded (angels, maybe? A cloud of witnesses, like the Bible talks about? Jesus, Himself?).

And there was peace. And there was grace – special, unexplainable grace that hangs on to this day.

I remember Ryan telling me that morning that my face was glowing with it.

So even when I tell someone that “I lost my mom last July,” nothing more needs to be said, I suppose. 

Yes, there is more to it than those simple words convey. So much more.

If you listen very carefully, you’ll hear the sound of grace.