InRetrospect

"When this is over," said Father Bodie to me before my mother died, "may God give you a resurrection moment."

Six years earlier, stroke had waged a pitiless war on my 83-year-old mother, paralyzing her entire right side, and confining her to a wheelchair. Her lilting British Guyanese accent was reduced to garbled mush. A once self-sufficient woman seemed now like a dependent child, needing help to eat, dress, and use the bathroom. Then there were other assaults: seizures, shingles, and finally pneumonia. It seemed every day I had something new to cry about. I recognized these attacks for what they were: harbingers of the end, demonic stagehands that would ring down the final curtain on my mother's life. Death was certain; resurrection only a word.

I was an only child, and my widowed mother and I had always been close. Even as I grew into adulthood, our bond never weakened. Life without her was unimaginable.

The combined effects of strokes and other illnesses were nothing less than assaults. She had been a wonderful and loving mother; my root, my cheerleader, my friend. And this was how her life would end. I could not believe, much less pray. Where was God in this?

The almost daily trips to the nursing home exhausted me, which in turn made me grumpy and depressed. I mumbled prayers to a God I scarcely believed existed to hear them, and when reading the Bible (mostly the Psalms), saw only meaningless black spots on the pages.

The weather the day of my mother's funeral seemed made to order: overcast; the trees still leafless despite being the first week of April; a remaining wintry chill. In the funeral home chapel, when I kissed my mother's face, I was shocked at its cold hardness. "Your mother is not there," said a close friend standing beside me at the coffin.

"Let's go to the cemetery," said my cousin Carmen to me a week after the funeral. "Let's take flowers to the grave." I did not feel like it, but as she would be returning to England soon, I wanted to oblige her.

It was not until we reached the cemetery grounds that I noticed the change. Formerly barren tree limbs were now laden with new spring blossoms; our feet walked upon a carpet of fresh, green grass. A soft breeze caressed our skin. And now we would replace the wilted funeral flowers on my mother's grave with fragrant roses. I couldn't help but think that this might be the resurrection moment Fr. Bodie had hoped for me.

Yet I was afraid to look at the fresh grave where my mother was now buried; and I felt numb from a week's worth of funeral planning, waiting for overseas relatives to come to New York, and from mourning. As I joined with my cousin to slowly remove the dead arrangements and put the new flowers in the plaque's small urn (in place from when my father had died), I grew calm, a little less afraid, and more aware of and grateful for the beauty surrounding us.

After placing the flowers, we stood silently, prayed, cried. Christ's words, "I am the resurrection and the life. Do you believe this?" came to me. My answer hung suspended between certainty and doubt, the certainty that comes easily on a beautiful spring morning, and the doubt that the grave shouts in rebuttal to Christ's claim. While I wanted desperately to believe that at last my mother was free from her suffering and now whole, I needed more time.

Christian theologian and author in the Quaker tradition Richard Foster said, "When we have a spirit of thanksgiving we can hold all things lightly. We receive, we do not grab. And when it is time to let go, we do so freely. We are not owners, only stewards." One of the hardest things for me during my time of loss was to still be thankful in the midst of grief, and to realize that I was experiencing the growing pains which we must all undergo on our journey in and to full adulthood. When all I could do was bear witness helplessly to my mother's ordeal, and to know that it was beyond my or any earthly being's power to restore her to health, thankfulness eluded me. The tears in my eyes clouded my vision, making it hard to be thankful not only for the loving bond I had had with my mother, but for the gift of time to enjoy that love. Nor could I understand then that God was giving me another kind of growing-up; one that was different and deeper than a mere physical one. Albeit a painful process, God was "growing me up" into the kind of adult He wanted me to become. Not one who clings, as does a child, but one who holds all things (and people) lightly. This is a loving rather than punitive act of God; for sometimes, I realized, when we resist growth, it is imposed upon us. Once I became truly thankful for
the life I had known with my mother, I was able to loosen my grip and share her with God, thereby allowing each of us to experience resurrection.

It is not possible to completely release those we have loved, nor should we have to. Not even death can sunder our connections. I felt both afraid and ready to loosen my grip for to do this meant having faith in God and in myself to move forward, even while looking back in memory. I will always be my mother's daughter, but no longer solely her daughter; I am that and also the person I have become and continue becoming, accompanied and guided by God.