Death makes no appointments

SOUL FOOD

In the days before Mother’s Day, as I wrote about the sadness the day

can stir up for many whose mothers have died, there was no way I

could have known that death was going to snatch two mothers from the

lives of women I know before the day was past.

Early in the morning, on the day before Mother’s Day, I got an

e-mail from a woman I know named Patty. In the subject line were

these three words: a heavy heart.

Her message began, “I received a knee-buckling call yesterday

telling me that Janie, who I just worked with the night before, had

died in her sleep.”

Janie, Patty explained, was the founder and president of their

church’s St. Vincent de Paul Society. She had a wealth of knowledge

but, more than that, she had a heart of gold. When the coffers went

empty, Janie reached into her own purse to help those she knew were

in need.

“She gave and gave and gave,” Patty wrote. “What a reminder -- a

smack upside the head -- to do good today. To love today. To laugh

today.”

That afternoon, I got another e-mail from a friend of mine named

Jeanni. As I read it, I could hear her Southern drawl. Her words

sounded tired and sad.

“I wanted to let y’all know that my mommy unexpectedly passed away

this morning,” was all she wrote.

Death doesn’t make appointments. It comes like an intruder, a

thief. It has a knack for showing up too early, the way it showed up

for the wife of a man my husband worked with a few years ago.

He went home early one afternoon because his wife, who was home

alone with their two young children, wasn’t feeling very well.

He took the children and went for a walk so she could lie down to

take a nap. He left her resting on the couch; when he returned, she

was dead.

Both Jeanni and Patty got heartfelt condolences from those who

received their news, most especially Jeanni on Mother’s Day.

To Patty, one friend wrote, “What a sad Mother’s Day for those

children. I hope they can take great comfort in the fact that their

mom lived as we all should, to make this world somewhat better as we

go along.”

It is a world of comfort when we lose a loved one to know that

they touched people’s lives, in good ways, and so made this world

better, too.

But what we often want far more is to know that they are, beyond

the grave, safe and happy and alive, in a far better place than this.

A place, perhaps, like John described in the Bible like this:

“[God] will live with them and ... he will wipe away all tears

from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief or crying

or pain.” Rev. 21:4

We’d like to think when death comes for us we, too, will journey

there.

I remember a conversation I had with my niece Kellen when she was

about 4. While I tucked her into bed one night, she asked me if I

believed in God and I told her that I did.

Then she asked me if I believed in Jesus and if I believed in

heaven. I could have just told her I did, I guess, but instead I

asked her about why she was asking me that.

So she told me about one morning at breakfast, when she’d asked

her mother, “What happens to people when they die?”

People are buried in the ground and over time, Kellen said her

mother told her, they pretty much become like fertilizer that helps

the plants and the trees and the flowers grow.

Kellen’s brow was furrowed, her eyes intent. She bit her lower

lip. “I don’t want to do that,” she said then paused. “I want to live

somewhere. Can’t I choose?”

Yes, you can,” I told her. “Everyone can.” And I told her a story

that Jesus told about a place many of us call heaven.

“There are many rooms in my Father’s house, and I am going to

prepare a place for you. I would not tell you this if it were not

so,” he said. John 14:2.

Our rooms are ready. All that’s left for us to do, I told my

niece, is to follow Jesus there.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].