Juanita Flies Away

I wrote this on the plane coming home from Idaho last Sunday night: 

My mother has been in heaven for about 12 hours. At around 6 AM this morning, I woke from an hour of deep, restful sleep and the song playing in my head was “The Sands of Time Are Sinking.”

I thought it odd but didn’t connect it with my mother’s entrance into glory. It wasn’t until around 7:45, when Bob went to check for an answer to a question from me, that he realized she was no longer breathing, but still warm.

I am stunned. I am not sad yet. I am still in take care of it mode.

But her body was picked up around noon.

 I listen to Anonymous Four sing “In the sweet By and By”

We shall sing on that beautiful shore

the melodious songs of the blest

And our spirits shall sorrow no more,

not a sigh for the blessing of rest.

This reminds me of that high, open-to-heaven weathered gray church I pictured so many times while she was in the hospital in 2006. I thought she was going to die then.  I sorrowed. I worried. We sang “Angel Band,”  over and over, wondering if this would be the time she might go…but no.

This past March 1, she had some kind of a meltdown, no one knew what exactly; again, I worried and sorrowed and tried to grab hold of the peace of Jesus. She came home, got better, but never better enough to get out of bed. She got to the first step of doing the commode on her own…for Haley, she walked a bit. She wanted to get better. At least she wanted me to believe she wanted to get better. Last Saturday night she decided to stop drinking: that would do it. But her teeth were sticking to her lips, and she wasn’t crazy about the prospect of drying up to die.

She fell last Saturday while I was gone. Always while I am gone, yes? That is the passive-aggressive pattern that says, “You were not here for me. I wasn’t sufficiently cared for.” As on March 1, when I was gone an extra day without her knowledge or permission. Not sure it was her desired to control so much as she really didn’t trust anyone on the planet except Al, Lew and me . . . I think.

She had forgotten where she was by the beginning of this week. “Where am I?” she asked, as I finished tucking her in after she’d gotten back into bed.

“You’re home.”

“Your house?”

“Yes.”

I didn't ask if she knew who I was. No point. But she didn’t have to go to a home. She was at her daughter’s home. That would have to do!

And Anonymous Four sings, “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need” which ends, “No more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home.” Now she is fully, completely home. I could imagine Lew cocking his head to look at her and saying, “Hi there, Sis!”

I have no idea what my dad might have said. He so deeply wanted her to be something she either could not be or refused to be….again, whether it was desire for control as much as it was fear and mistrust that kept her from throwing herself into his arms and simply loving him, I will never know in this life.

Do they have group therapy in heaven? 

And of course, as always happens, the change doesn’t come until you have learned the lesson. The night before I left for this trip, she called me four or five times. She had lost the ability to figure out anything except her need. “Anxiety! Anxiety!” And I was able to take care of her without getting mad, just frustrated…we had tried Norco and it wasn’t so good. I left Jan a note that she might be better off with morphine because Norco made her nuts.

So for about a week she was non compus menus. Not a bad deal, although she had to wait a long eight months to get to that week.

And of course, that all rolled together while I was gone.

The dynamics of that are another mystery to me. But to know that Bob and Surabhi spent an hour between 2-3 AM on Saturday when she was agitated—holding her, touching her, talking to her and giving her love that she finally had to receive…she fell asleep holding Bob’s hand. From there it was just the wait for things to stop. I am guessing that the hour of agitation was her brain’s final attempt, final unraveling, final struggle to make sense of a world that often seemed to mystify her.

What shall we say then? Brittany wants her Bible, especially one that has notes, poems, etc. in it that were important to her. Hard to understand that this woman probably was functionally illiterate In some ways, possibly dyslexic? Hard to know, but she did finally say several times in the past months, “You know, I really don’t read.” Indeed. No wonder she was excited that I read and read and wrote and wrote. She wrote beautiful letters and wrote them with a lovely hand, but that was at her own pace, not with the pressure of reading a number of pages at a time. She majored in speech, probably hoping that would keep her focus on talking and eliminate the need for much reading.

Then there was the accident, when school went by the board in favor of survival. In her weakest moments, she saw Jesus standing at the end of the bed, waiting to take her home. He waited a long time for her to finally come with Him. But He is infinitely patient; it was only a moment between that day in a hospital bed with more broken bones and shards of glass in her than she could count…and yet, she survived to give birth, quite improbably, to two children at old ages. 36 and 44. Raised them.

And Anonymous Four sing, “O Come, Angel band. Come and around me stand. O bear me away on your snowy wings to my immortal home…”

This is great music to grieve to. Thank you, Lynnette and Debbie.