Celebrating a life well lived

I remember the scene vividly. I must have been 4 or 5 years old and was talking with my mother in the back yard while she was hanging clothes on the line to dry.

Mom had been telling me how Jesus was going to return someday and call all those who believe in him up to Heaven. Being the clever little fellow I was, I figured out that all I had to do was stay close to her and then I could grab her leg and I would be lifted up with her when the time came.

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that,” she said. “You have to believe in Jesus for yourself. No one can do it for you.”

That memory played over and over in my mind on the morning of May 27. I could see my mother, young and pretty with that reassuring smile on her face. Before my eyes, my mother lay in her hospital bed; disconnected from life support and gasping for the last few breaths her 74-year-old body would ever take.

I gently stroked her leg. Dad held her hand. My brothers, sister-in-law, daughter, niece and a pastor from her church prayed for her and encouraged her to move on and find peace in the arms of Jesus. With all of us gathered around, she drew her final breath and her heart made its final beats.

The whole experience was surreal. Just 12 hours earlier, I got a call from my dad saying that my mother’s time was near. A short time later my brother called with flight information. A few hours later I was flying out of Houston for Denver.

Mom had surgery three weeks earlier to remove scar tissue from a surgery that had nearly killed her 14 years ago. Her frail body was not strong enough to recover from the operation. Her lungs were too weak for her to come off the ventilator. Other complications arose. The last four days she had been mostly comatose under sedation as her body slowly failed her.

The morning I arrived, however, she was bright and alert. Though she couldn’t speak, her face lit up when she saw me enter her room. One at a time we all said our goodbyes to her. We thanked her. We loved her. We each let her go. When she was removed from the ventilator, her eyes wondered from person to person, her own way of saying goodbye.

As she began to drift, her gaze turned upward to the back of the room. I looked but didn’t see anything. She saw something, and it brought her peace. You could see it in her face. There was peace and there was love and then she was gone.

At her funeral, stories were shared of a selfless woman who gave everything she had to her family and her friends. Our home had been one of refuge for several in hard times. It was a place where there were no strangers. Mom was always looking out for everyone else, always placing her needs behind theirs.

One thing that surprised me, but shouldn’t have, was the number of people who came out for the visitation and funeral. There were so many people from so many walks of her life. I made the comment that it was like Facebook, but real. Scores of people that I had only seen online or not at all for 14 years or more were suddenly surrounding us, laughing, crying, and celebrating a life well lived.

It was beautiful. Where I had expected pain, hurt and loss I instead found joy and peace. Sure, we grieve and miss her, but more than anything there was contentment that she left on her own terms, surrounded by her family and shrouded in love.

I knew as I held her leg when she left to be with Jesus that this parting is temporary and someday we will share with her in paradise.

God bless you Donna Jean Southern! May you rest in peace until we meet again.