"I can hear Grandma singing, Mom."

It has been a long weekend, and certainly not the kind kids and full-time employees look forward to. This morning, at about 4 a.m., my mom left this Earth. Some knew her as Vicki, some as Sis or Sissy, but I knew her as something much greater - the best mom a girl could have asked for, and the best grandma my daughter ever could have had, even if they only had a chance to make a few swingset memories together before Mom got too ill to play with her much.

As I write this, I'm entirely exhausted in mind, body, and spirit. My hands are actually shaking and making it hard for me to type. My mind is spinning with so many thoughts, and tears occasionally run a river down my cheeks. I have been awake now for fifty-some odd hours, with about an hour of sleep in the midst of it all, as I've spent most of the last two days, since the wee hours Sunday morning, in a room with my mom and family at the nursing home where she's been a resident for many years.

She was permanently admitted to a nursing facility way back in 2004, at the ripe old age of 53, when her "Parkinsonisms" began to be so debilitating that it wasn't safe for her to reside elsewhere. Over the last decade, we have watched a vibrant, brilliant, hardworking, tenacious, dedicated, strong, beautiful, life- and people-loving lady lose her ability to speak, to walk, to move. The woman who I was sure could singlehandedly save the universe from anything spent her last day on Earth in a hospital bed, with a tube in her nose and her hands and feet curled into immoveable contortions. The woman who used to teach up such a storm in Sunday school that even the adults around her would be crying and coming to the Lord right along with the little ones was unable to speak a word to us, to reach out and hug us, to walk with us or share any sage advice with us. For the most part, for the last 15 hours of her life, she could not even blink. Her eyes were glazed over, and it seemed she was staring into nothing, right through us, to some point far beyond. Every breath was a gasp and a struggle. Every minute, we wondered if she would breathe again. We held her hands, prayed our quiet prayers, and told her over and over again that she was free to go. "Go on home, Mama... Now, Sis, you listen to your little sister and let go now... Honey, we'll be okay. You go on now... Sissy, Jesus is waiting for you. Just go, sweetheart... Little Nikki and Linda and Jan and Gramps and Gram are waiting. You go on now and be with them, and we'll be along shortly... You've taken care of us all your life. Go on and take care of yourself, now, Mom, and step into Heaven... We love you, but quit being so stubborn and go ahead now." For those who haven't the blessed assurance we have, these things might have sounded cruel. Did we have a death wish for our own mother? Yep. How could we? How dare we? Simple. Because her death here was merely an escape from a sick body that has held her prisoner for far too long, and  today, she's been set free! All this time, while we've been living, for all these years, she's been dying, and today, her dying ceased.


In the last moments of my mom's life, something beautiful happened: She looked at us. Now, to some folks, that might sound absurd. Hundreds of times a day, we look at others, and others look at us, but we take that for granted. Our mom was so stricken with sickness in her last fifteen hours of life that she could not look at us. She could not even acknowledge our presence with a glance or a blink But just before four a.m. this morning, in the quietness of her room, something flashed into her eyes. They became pretty again, that chocolate brown they always had been. She looked at my dad. She moved her eyes just enough to look at my sister. She looked at my daughter Cissy, her namesake. She rolled her eyes back as well as she could to look at my brother and me, since she could no longer turn her head. Then, just like that, she looked up above her, as if she was looking at someone or somewhere else. Then, in an instant, after that beautiful moment, she left. We literally watched as her eyes suddenly seemed vacant, like a doll's, glazed over and empty again. She took one more faltering breath and was gone.

On the way to my sister's after we left the nursing home, my daughter wept a bit over her grandma and said, "I can hear Grandma singing, Mom." Of course Cissy didn't mean this literally, but I knew what she did mean. Those glances were not the only thing our mom can do today that she hasn't done in a long time. Today, my mom is walking. She's talking. She's hugging long-lost loved ones and telling them all about the rest of us down here. She's probably already scolding a bunch of Heaven's housekeepers as to how to do things right, or maybe she's weeding the heavenly gardens or talking to The Duke to tell him just how much she loved True Grit. She's thanking the Lord for all He's done for her, and she's asking him - with her own sweet voice that she lost long ago down here - to take care of her grandbabies and her nieces and nephews and kids. My mom is my mom again today, the mama we lost long ago, a thousand times better than she ever was.

I cannot imagine what my mom has been through the last decade or more, as her body failed her and imprisoned her. She was a hard worker like her own mama, my beloved Grandma Miesse, and she was stubborn like her daddy, my Grandpa Miesse - just like he still is today, she never, ever, ever wanted anyone to tell her to sit down and rest. Her illness forced her into perpetual rest for many years, and I often questioned God over those years, why He would leave her trapped that way. I still don't know the answer to that, but I don't need to. All I need to know is that God took her home today, and I know that, in great part, because my mommy - one of the greatest wielders of the flannel-graph board who ever lived - taught me from a very young age that in His time, God will take home those who believe. My mom lived her faith, and in the last few years, she fought the good fight, and she loved and cared for her children and the children of others with a dedication that is seldom matched.

She used to love this little kids' Sunday school song, a cassette she wore out. It was called "Jesus Put the Song in My Heart." ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7JjXY86bBc ) Today, I really can hear my mom singing, too, just like my daughter said...and because of that, I have a song in my heart even on the day my mommy died.