And so it is coming. We’ve known since December 6th that Mama is dying. But knowing in the theoretical doesn’t really prepare you for the reality. Having never been present during the dying process, it is all new territory. And although she was present for both my dad’s mother and her own father’s slow journeys to their deaths, this is new territory for Mama as well, of course. You don’t get a practice run for dying.

She stopped her cancer drug about a month ago now and officially entered hospice care. The drug was more or less holding the lung tumor at bay, but doing nothing for the brain tumor, and though it was keeping her alive, it wasn’t giving her a LIFE. The decision to stop was not hard. She knows her destination and is eager to reach it. It’s the dying process itself that scares her – a not unreasonable fear given the likely symptoms involved.

The doctors promise that you don’t have to die in pain and discomfort, but they don’t always make clear that to do that, you will have to be on massive amounts of drugs, and that the side effects of those drugs can be as difficult to manage as the symptoms of the disease itself – especially if, as with Mama, you can’t tolerate some of the best drugs for the symptoms.

In the last month, and especially in the last week, Mama has deteriorated noticeably. Quite probably the brain tumor is exacting a high price by now, and the lung tumor is also likely to be far more vicious. The cancer may have even spread further. Certainly she has more frequent and worse pain, has absolutely no energy, and now is dealing with some mental confusion. It doesn’t seem likely that she can go on for too much longer. None of us would want her to.
Yet it still comes as something of a shock, this adjusting to constant new realities, this realization that change will be the new “normal” from here on out. For all the grieving I have already done, I keep finding new depths to plumb – and I expect it will go on until, and after, she is gone. I dread her being gone, even while I pray for the Lord to take her quickly. It’s such an odd mixture of emotions.

But what I’m going through is nothing new. Children have been helping their parents through death since Seth and his siblings watched Adam and Eve die. Being at the tail end of the Boomer generation, many, many of my friends have already lost their parents, or are in the same process, or expect to be there before long. In one way, it is irrelevant because no one else has gone through MY loss, and yet, in another, it is a huge comfort to me to know that I share my lot with others. It was the same when we lost a child to miscarriage between our 4th and 5th children, and I discovered at my women’s Bible study that of the 12 women there, only two had not suffered the same loss – and of those two, one had not married until after her child-bearing years were past. What I am doing in taking care of my mother is nothing extraordinary, either. It has been done by millions of children, is being done by millions of children, and will continue to be done by children until the Lord comes.

In his first letter, Paul tells the Corinthians that “nothing has overtaken you but what is common to man.” Although he was talking specifically about temptation, in reality, the same thing applies to all of life. None of us goes through anything really and truly unique. The exact circumstances may vary, but the kind of trauma, the kind of loss – in these, too, there is nothing new under the sun. Most important of all, in His temptation in the wilderness, in His suffering and death, Christ somehow experienced every human experience. There is no trauma or loss that Christ cannot relate to. He is not standing by watching what we are going through and saying, “Man, I wish I knew how to help, but this is beyond Me.” No, He is ever-present, sure and steady, our Rock in the midst of the flood. As He wept at Lazarus’ tomb, weeping at the destruction brought about in His creation by the entrance of sin, He shares our grief at the death of our mother, but beyond that He stands with us to give us the strength to bear up, the peace that even this is one of the “all things” that He is working together for good for those who love Him, and the sure and certain Hope of the Resurrection to come. What blessed comfort!!

“Jesus walked this lonesome valley
He had to walk it by Himself
Oh, nobody else could walk it for Him
He had to walk it by Himself.

You and I must walk this valley
But we don’t walk it by ourselves
No, He gave His live to walk it for us
So we won’t walk it by ourselves.”