In the Company of Angels

On Friday, I received the call at my office from my sister. Almost immediately, I understood that this was the real thing. Mom was in the Emergency Room at Abington Hospital and in great pain. My sister Megan was extremely upset as it was taking the hospital forever to deal with Mom’s situation.

We had known for more than a year that my mother had a blood condition that would inevitably lead to the end, but despite her 88 years, she remained a huge life force. She seemed to withstand all of life’s afflictions in a perpetual state of good will and good humor, all amounting to nothing less than sheer joy. She faced the darker forces of this life combatively and her friends and children and acquaintances fed off of her powerful and positive spirit of life. The Bible says “choose life” and Mom chose it to the power of ten.

I traveled from New York to the hospital in the suburbs of Philadelphia that evening. When I got there, Mom was in intensive care and heavily sedated. Her breathing was labored but she was asleep and resting and seemed to be beyond the reach of the physical pain that she had suffered through earlier in the day. Megan and I sat with her for several hours and then we reluctantly left for our own resting places for the night.

Saturday was a day of choices. The doctors all were clear that she was in the last days of her life. We learned that the hospital had a hospice facility and Megan, my brother Steven and I visited it and were impressed by the people who ran it. And after conferring with my brother David, who was still in California, we decided that hospice care was the best option. Mom remained under sedation and asleep all that day and we began to believe that she would never awaken again. She would be moved to hospice care on Monday.

On Sunday, after attending a local church service, my sister and I returned to Abington to be with Mom who remained in intensive care. Soon Steven arrived with his laptop and a DVD of ancient home movies. Unknown to all of us, Steven had brought medicine from heaven. We turned the computer on and watched flickering images of children and parents and places from long ago and we spontaneously began to share stories and memories prompted by what we were looking at on the screen. Soon, the mood changed from the normal hush of a hospital to laughter and jokes and joy. And then Mom awoke from her deep sleep. This was a party she was not going to miss! She recognized all of us and said “I love you” several times. Even the nurses looked up from their stations to see what was going on. Tracey, the nurse in charge of Mom, came in and joined the party that celebrated life in a place where illness and death was so prevalent. This time of light and life would be short lived, but for everyone present it was a miracle. When I think back to those precious moments, I think of the words of King David’s psalm:

You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.

On Monday, Mom had fallen into a deep sleep once again. She was moved from intensive care to the hospice and so we sat with her throughout the day. That night I returned home as did Steven. We fully expected the vigil to last for a good long time, but on Tuesday in the early afternoon in the presence of my sister Megan, Mom took a gentle last breath and then her spirit rose from that place in the company of angels.