Sacred passage

Last week Hal and I had the privilege of being with Hal’s mom as she died. We had spent the night with her in the hospital, and that morning five of us brothers and sisters (including spouses) stood around her bed singing hymns and reading the Psalms that she had underlined in her Bible. We watched her becoming less and less responsive.

And then, at exactly 12:00 noon, she stopped breathing. Without a sound or movement. Very gently, she went home. It was a holy moment.

We stayed there by her body for just under an hour, crying, praying, remembering, laughing.

Later this week the family will gather at the burial site to worship, in the same spot we gathered five months ago to honor the homegoing of Hal’s father. They’re together again. In three weeks we’ll remember her life with the extended family and many friends as we hold a Quaker memorial service.

Mom, Esther May Thomas, was 95 years old, and Dad, William Thomas, 97. It was time.

The day after Mom’s death, I went to the Newberg Bakery with my 19 year old granddaughter. Breanna is a university student, newly engaged, and faces her future with hope and anticipation. Her face is as lovely and smooth as her great-grandmother’s face was lovely and wrinkled.

I have such a sense of the ongoing seasons of life and of the beauty of each season. I have a sense of the beauty of resurrection and the brightness of the hope we have in Jesus. I’m closer to one end of the cycle, but I face my own seasons with the same hope and anticipation I see in my granddaughter’s face.

God is good. Life is sacred.  All of it.