16 Days, and an Eternity

My last post went up the morning of August 3. Fitting. That afternoon, I found out that my mom was very, very sick. Not throwing up sick. Not sneezing a lot sick. Liver failing sick. Perhaps only a few weeks to live sick. She died 16 days later. How we got to that point is movie-worthy.

Three years ago, I was a senior in college. Mom's dad had had a major health scare in June. I rushed home to be with Papa, as well as Granny, Mom, and my aunt. My sister soon followed from Texas. A tumor had grown on his pituitary gland, and blood thinners for some leg clots caused his pituitary to rupture. We thought he was done for certain. He was sent for emergency surgery at UVA. Against all odds, he lived through surgery and fought through some hard months as doctors tried to figure out the right balance of medication to do the work that his pituitary used to do. In addition, he lost his eyesight in the surgery. It was a hard few months (and years since) for our family. That September, Mom called me and told me that the ovarian cancer that she fought into remission back in 2002 had returned. She told me and Ashley, but asked that we not inform Papa and Granny of this news, so as not to burden them with this on top of everything with my grandfather. I left college for a week to be with my mom in the hospital for her surgery and recovery. The post-surgery report was interesting. The tiny little tumor that had come back had shriveled up and died inside her body. It was curious, to be sure. I'd never heard of cancer doing that, but we took the good news and ran. My mom left the hospital, recuped her body, and went back to work.

After her surgery in 2002, I had had the privilege of escorting Mom down the aisle at Ashley's wedding. Eight months thereafter, she witnessed Ashley's college graduation, and my high school graduation. In July of 2003, she helped her eldest child move to Texas. Then in August, she took me to the University of Richmond to drop off her baby boy at college. It was like she beat cancer so she could be who she needed to be for us, for all the things we were going to be doing with our lives. After she beat cancer again in 2006, she saw me graduate from U of R that next spring. She saw me into my first year working with InterVarsity at Roanoke College. In the summer of 2008, she helped me to move to Chapel Hill for my first permanent placement with IV at UNC. That fall, she came down to help me pick out Julie's engagement ring. She wanted me to choose the purest, cleanest, most beautiful diamond I could afford. She probably would have helped me pay if I had asked her to. She was always there for the planning of our wedding, doing whatever we asked her to do to help us, and then some things we didn't even think about. Just this past May, she joined me at Julie's graduation from Richmond, and just two weeks later went out with my sister in Texas to celebrate her graduation from business school. A month later, Mom was right there with me, sending me off into marriage with my wife. What we found out the afternoon of August 3, 2009, was that all of these things she had witnessed since October 2006, all of these acts of love, she had done in the midst of receiving treatments for a cancer that just wouldn't quit on her this time. It hadn't curled up and died, but rather, it slowly began to spread all over her abdominal organs. But my mom was just as stubborn as that stupid cancer was. It would not prevent her from being our mom. It would not keep her from supporting us at graduations, or from helping her pick out the perfect ring for her soon-to-be daughter-in-law, or from being so proud at our weddings.

She never told us about the cancer that she fought from 2006 to 2009 because she didn't want it to get in the way of those things. She didn't want her life, her fight, to get in the way of our lives. And it didn't. Bless her stubborn heart, it didn't. She did so much for me and my wife at our wedding in June, that looking back it feels, literally, like she laid herself down for us. It was almost immediate that the tables began to turn on her. It was after our wedding that there began to be noticeable changes in my mom's energy level, and zest for life. The cancer began to get the edge. By late July, her liver was failing, and she became jaundiced. Finally, on August 3, my sister was able to talk to her doctor about why she had gone to hospital. When he began the conversation with, "Your mother is very sick," my sister knew that it was serious.

I am thankful as I look back on this most memorable of Augusts that Ashley and I were able to take a leave from our specific places of work to spend it with Mom, praying with her, encouraging her, prepping her meals, administering her medication and physical therapy. We saw her strength clear as day in those last 16 days of her life. What I had so often seen in her as stubbornness, I realized in actuality was a unique blend of strength, love, and selflessness. She did lay herself down for Ashley and I, and our spouses, whom she considered her children as well. And she wanted to keep fighting to see some grandchildren one day soon. But she just didn't have it in her. The sovereign Lord was ready to call her home.

But in his graciousness, the Lord cared intimately for her in those last days. He gave her 16 days with the two people she loved the most, her two kids. He allowed her caretakers to be not some random medical personnel that she didn't know from anyone, but her two dear children. And on the last day of her life, one of our friends, our church organist, came over to the house. The Lord had given her a message. "Brenda, God told me that I'm to come tell you that I'll help Ashley and John to take care of your grandchildren." It was Wednesday, August 19. And she may have been comatose at that point, but that was the last thing she needed to hear. Soon thereafter her very labored breathing became slower, more at peace. And at 10:00 PM, she took her last breath.

Now, one week later, I'm thinking about what it will be like to return to Chapel Hill. To go back to life as usual. And I realize I won't do that; I'll never go back. I can only go forward, to life after Mom. To a life that doesn't just make her proud, but that in actuality carries on her legacy. See, her legacy was, is, and always will be raising up two kids in a single-parent home, and making sure we didn't become statistics about broken families. Just as she laid herself down these last three years that we would be able to live life normally, she's laid herself down these last 24 years since my parents' divorce that we would have a normal childhood and a thriving young adulthood. She raised us to be followers of Christ and faithful members of our community. Her legacy is not herself, the things she loved or the things she did. Her legacy is Ashley, and her legacy is me. My sister and I will write her legacy from here on out. There are many things to be thankful for, Christmas gifts, a house and home, a good education, help on the engagement ring, but they are all so small by comparison to what I am most thankful for.

Thanks Mom, for your life. I love you, and I'll miss you. Until we are together again, worshipping the Lamb into eternity. And thanks also in advance, because I know you will have my bed neatly made, just so that I feel at home.

Trick, or Treat, or Both?

So I'm working up my blogger endurance to where I can post a little more frequently. A couple things are preventative here. One is clearly my perfectionism. I can't put mediocre work out there for everyone. (I know what you're thinking. "This is the good stuff?!") Yeah, yeah. The other is just straight-up busyness. I don't know how the more proficient bloggers do it.

So my wife and I rented the recently released stop-motion animation movie, Coraline. A solid addition to the I-think-these-people-tried-to-make-a-kids'-movie-but-totally-failed genre. Or maybe they didn't intend it for kids. But the PG rating and the animation sure throws me off. It's got some pretty intense scenes. The thing I love about fantasy-tinged movies is that they can bend and break rules more realistic movies must abide by. Hard to pull off metamorphizing tricks like you see in fantasy movies without going the unfortunate way of the Transformers blights. If you're going to turn a chidren's book or toy into a movie, trying to make it as realistic as possible defeats the purpose. Can't wait for this, by the way! But I digress...

Without revealing plot spoilers, I'll offer what I took away from the movie. It attempts to make the point that maintaining the mentality of a child is a risk-reward endeavor. It's Coraline's adventurousness that both gives her life meaning and also leads her astray into the throes of darkness. The antagonist of the movie lures her into immense danger by way of wonderful treats, great food, luscious desserts, wondrous circus and theatrical shows, and a beautiful garden that from the aerial view looks just like Coraline. As Coraline begins to realize the evil intent behind these things, the appearance of everything in this begins to fade. Rather than appearing to be very lush, everything begins to actually look dead and decayed.

There's some reality to this. If you think about it, this is sort of the way evil works. I mean, there's the obvious Garden of Eden example. It continues to work this way today. How often does what begins as sweet romance end up in terrible tragedy, a conduit of human brokenness that results in immense pain or even death? Or the hundreds and thousands of kids that get sucked into gang life or organized crime through the edifice of "friends and family." Let's not forget the operations of Al-Qaeda, which covers its despicable actions with the "religious inspiration" card.

Yet, as one of the more affecting songs I've ever heard reminds me, I would be robbing myself of vital self-awareness to stop at pointing at far off examples of evil covered over by beauty or virtue. I do this myself all the stupid time. Almost everything "good" that I do for others is shrouded with selfish intent. Self-aggrandizement. Self-advancement. Self-assurance. All of the above. It all starts innocently, of course. Because that's how evil presents itself to us.

The question is, when we start to realize it's evil, what do we do? When the pretty face begins to fade, and we can acknowledge that something we are doing or about to do is rooted in evil intentions, do we go through with it? Or do we go running as fast as we can back to reality, back to goodness, back to righteousness? This means running as fast as we can back to the cross on which Jesus died. There is nothing more real, more apparent to a stupid man's eyes, than a perfect God paying off his own wrath that was due to sinful man. That reality is so ridiculous it can't be a trick.