When My Mom Passes On

My mom is 200 miles away in a nursing home bed, where she has lived for a little over four years. She has been waiting . . . ready to move to her eternal home on the other side. Her body had been way too healthy for her age, until her mind began to fade and she became even more unmanageable. Her face is not the face of a 90 year old woman for it’s as smooth as silk with only a slight wrinkle. My husband says I inherited her skin. That fact alone proves that she was here, that she lived on this earth and that she gave birth to a baby named Cherry.

With each visit, she has faded more, moving ever so slowly to the other side. For over a year, she’s not even known who I am. When I go into her room, I introduce myself again, and with a smile on her face she tells me that she has a daughter with the same name. Then she starts listing her thoughts about her daughter, how wonderful, how sweet, what a wonderful baby she was, how everyone wanted to play with her growing up. Then she tells me that she wants us to meet, her daughter and me. When I go to visit, we laugh a lot, mostly because she is talking as if she is already in another world . . . a world of her own making. It’s a world mixed up with particles of her past life as a child, her life as a young adult, and her life with my dad. I most often dread these visits, due to the stress involved. I leave, however, with my self-esteem boosted a couple of notches, and it has prepared me somehow for now.

I’ve known that one day I would get a call of her further decline. I said my goodbyes long ago. I really lost my mom the day after my dad died, 14 years ago. I think the stress caused her personality to abruptly change. I thought it would be okay when she passed on, that I would be okay about all of it. I am okay, but there’s one thing that I really want now. It’s a simple thing. It costs nothing. It requires little. It means a lot to me.

I need to visit again – later today. This could me my last one. She had a stroke yesterday, and was asking for the nurse to hold her hand. I am looking forward to this visit. In fact, I can’t get there fast enough.
You see . . . . . my mom was with me when I was born, so the least, the very least I can do is to be there holding her hand when she passes on to the other side.

Please pray that I can get there in time to hold my mom’s hand when she passes through to the other side.

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we, who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.”
I Thess. 4:13-15 NAS