Easter morning, 2006, I found myself trying to get the family dressed and out into the car so we could make it to the 9:00am service without being late. I had issued the “five minute warning,” the one that goes something like, “if you’re in the car in five minutes we’re leaving without you (like any of my children, ages 24, 21, and 14 would think that was such a drastic consequence). Having made my pronouncement, I then had the opportunity to retreat to the solitude of the downstairs bathroom, knowing that certainly they would not be ready any sooner than that first five minutes.
No sooner had I closed the door to the bathroom when the phone rang. With five persons living in this house, all well trained in the use of a telephone, I left the answering to someone else. No one I know (mostly pastors and other church types) would be calling at 8:40am on Easter morning.
Finally someone answered. “It’s for you, Dad.” It was the nursing supervisor at the Nursing Home where my mom has been a resident for the last four years. “We think she is dying, you may want to come up today.”
And so I found myself in a hospital on Long Island on Easter Sunday by the bedside of my step-mother, waiting with her for that moment when she will take the step from this life -- that has carried her for 83 years, 3 months and 7 days – into the next one which will hold her for eternity.
There in that hospital room we celebrated Easter, not with the sound of a pipe organ blasting out “Alleluias” but with quiet sound of an IV infusion pump doling out doses of saline solution; not with the smell of lilies, but with the smell of hand sanitizer and the other not-so-wonderful smells that greet one in a hospital. We read the scripture (John 20:1-18), I quietly sang for her some of our favorite Easter hymns, and we prayed prayers. So there would be no doubt it was a Methodist service, there was an offering: I offered her up to God.
Note: Mom didn't make the journey on Easter, but on the day after. I told her Dad was waiting for her on the buffet line, but she waited until Monday. Who knows, maybe she heard Jesus calling from the shore, inviting her to a breakfast he was barbecuing. I suppose I'll have to ask her when I get there.
