My Dying Mom

An update on Mom: after an intensive series of tests today, the doctors decided that Mom's condition is so severely deteriorated that she will proabably have only "days or weeks" to live. She has been brought home from the hospital because she has strongly indicated that she wants to die at home. She is receiving wonderful assistance from Hospice, which for anyone who doesn't know is a service specifically designed to support terminally ill patients in their final days, and helps patients end their days in their own homes in situations like ours.

As for how old Charles is holding up: by God's grace and your prayers, I'd say as well as can be under the circumstances. I carry my breviary everywhere and just having it at hand seems to remind me that God is here. I cry and cry and cry some more ... and by God's Grace am convinced that Jesus is crying with me and His Mother is crying with me and for her and all the saints of Holy Church are weeping at the passing of this very ordinary, and therefore very extraordinary, lady. I am so grateful that our Lord Jesus Christ is Wholly God and Wholly Man, that He understands all our sufferings better than we do.

As I am typing this, I am sitting in a chair across from my mother, asleep in a hospital bed on loan through Hospice. I am exhausted and every time I think there is no more room for tears find that in fact there are more. Yet I know that this room is filled with all the Saints and Angels of Holy Church, watching over my mother as she slumbers. They weep as Christ Here Present weeps; as Our Sorrowful Mother weeps. I have been told that every man who dies is an Ikon of Christ Who dies; and that every woman who dies is an Ikon of the Dormition of Mary; and know by God's Grace that this is a time of great horror and pain and also a time of great Love. God in His Love has made of this little room an Ikon of Calvary.

I truly believe that my Vocation today is to Watch with Christ as He prays and sweats Blood in the Gethsemani here present. I think my Vocation is to wipe the excrement of a dying woman and empty her urine bag as often as it needs to be emptied. My Vocation today is to Cry and to Weep and thereby to honor the passing of this woman. My Vocation today is to do my little part in this little home to let Christ work through me to uphold the Dignity of this Human Person, Imago Dei, overflowing with Christ and with the Mother of God, "alive with worth till the very end" as one of the Encyclicals celebrating Life says. I am so deeply grateful for this woman who is dying in front of me; and I am so deeply grateful for the Body of Christ that subsists in the Roman Catholic Church that always and everywhere upholds the worth and Dignity of every human life, from conception till death ... and beyond. Your prayers and your kindness speak to me of a Church that stands with anyone, anywhere who is suffering, for anyone anywhere who is suffering is an Ikon of the Suffering Christ.

And I am grateful for the gifts of God here Present. Reminding me that Here I have no lasting place: My Mom is passing through a door after all that I, and all of us, will pass through at our appointed time. I look at this woman and am reminded that the time will come when our time of Exile here will come to an end. I look at her and remember that I too was born to die. Life in this world is after all nothing more nor less nor other than preparatio mori. I look at her knowing that my life in this world is so brief, "like grass in the summer and then it is gone," as the Psalmist says. Looking at the dying face of the Image of the Mother of God, what much matters in this life? "All things are full of weariness, a man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing" as Qoheleth says.

If this life is at least in large part a "preparatio", a School of Love, my Mom is still teaching me a thing or two. You know what Mom said to me today, after we had hugged and cried after the news from the doctors? I was there and so was her sister and two of her nieces; ours is not a big family. But she said, through eyes dimmed with pain, and with a mind not entirely clear at all times, "Thank you all. I have loved you all so much. But it's time for me to go. It's time to go and it's alright." We had just prayed the Our Father and she clearlly meant that she was ready to go to her true Home. To her True Father. There are so many lessons here for me. So here is my Mom, even as she's dying, still teaching her son. She taught me how to live. Now she is teaching me how to die. With deep Gratitude, for all the gifts of God in this life, which are after all simply on loan to us. "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord."

Wow this is long. Thanks for listening. I needed to talk with someone I guess and it's late at night here and no one else is up now on this Dark Night of the Soul, this Holy Saturday in the Tomb. I think I may get a few hours of sleep now unless Mom calls again. And if she does, what a privilege it will be to respond and serve her. As she prepares, with the assistance of Christ and Mary and all the Angels and Saints, to go her way.

Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
And blessed is the Fruit of they womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinngers,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Bernard of Clairvaux
Eve of Pope St Piux X