Mom’s Homecoming

When we moved to Minnesota in April, we came for the purpose of helping my parents so they could continue to live at home. My mom has had severe arthritis since her teens and lived in constant pain through the last decades. Over the past years, she has been able to walk short distances only with the help of a walker, and then only with great difficulty.

After 6-1/2 months, we were all feeling good about us being in Minnesota and being able to help my parents. But on October 18th, within a few seconds, “normal” was forever changed. For my mom, it came with a loss of balance and a backward fall where her head hit the bed post on the way to the floor. After a few seemingly normal words, she would speak no more. For my dad, brother, sister, and me, we waited 30 hours for the end of her life that was certain after the injury she suffered. 

So we started the grieving early until mom took her last breath. But with this final event of mom’s life, there began that strange transformation that only followers of Jesus can understand. The sadness continued. But there grew alongside it a certain hope and confidence that mom’s decades of pain were over; and more importantly her true life was just beginning. The grieving was not gone, but it was transformed by an accompanying joy as we knew the victory and life that my mom was now living.

At the memorial service, we were gratified by the testimonies about this life, though crippled and limited physically, had touched so many people. And we sang the words of a very appropriate hymn:

The strife is o’er, the battle is done.
And Christ the Lord, the victory has won.
Alleluia!

Now Cherie and I continue to live with Dad and help him as Parkinson’s is challenging his life. We do what we can to help as he is learning to live without his beloved wife of 62 years. But we continue to know that despite the sadness and separation of death, it is not something to be feared. It will some day give to us that homecoming where we will live with Jesus too.