My mom died about six months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. With emergency surgeries and complications along the way, there were three distinct times I said to her, "you have to make a choice about Jesus". We'd had ten years of hours long conversations about Him and the history of our people and what God Himself did to restore us to Him. The last time I brought up Jesus was about three weeks before she died. She responded from her hospital bed after deciding to stop chemotherapy "I'm okay with God, but not Jesus". Even though we had these conversations over the years and she would say she knew He was real because my transformation was so evident and undeniable to her, she struggled with believing herself because she thought it would hurt our family members and she didn't want the controversy. She saw the reaction they had towards me and was afraid of the same response.
The next call I received was from my aunt who asked me not to talk about Jesus anymore. Believe it or not, I agreed. I had literally asked my mom three separate times and she had answered the third time. It felt like failure, like I had failed as a witness. I knew whatever happened, whether my moms future looked like what I anticipated or not, God was Good...He had proved Himself faithful to me over and over and over again.
My mom was released from the hospital in Ann Arbor December 11...two days before Hannukah started. We all thought she might recuperate after getting some distance from her chemo treatments which were notoriously awful for her. I thought she likely wouldn't make it another year, but away from chemo she could enjoy the last few months of her life. I drove in on that Friday 12/15. She was using hospice services at my grandma's house in her back den. This meant hospice came and set up a bed, then left us with an arsenal of morphine and a phone number for an on call hospice nurse if we noticed her conditions were getting worse.
When I arrived, I was under the impression we'd hired additional 24/7 care to help with my mom. I was surprised to learn that wasn't the case; my sister decided she would stay there overnight and take care of her. She'd been there for four nights at this point and I could tell my grandmother was tense about it.
I got there in the afternoon . "Did somebody shoot Trump yet"? That's the first thing she asked me when I arrived. I told her no one had and she grumbled a little. She wanted to look at her jewelry collection with my sister and I. I'm not a huge jewelry person and it honestly was the last activity I'd wanted to spend some final moments with my mom doing but my grandma and aunt insisted it was what she wanted to do. In an attempt to draw more meaning out of it, I asked her to tell us the story behind each piece of jewelry she had, which led to other memories and stories of things we'd all experienced together. Wedding bands, engagement rings, necklaces she wore for years at a time, jewelry purchases on vacations, people who'd gifted her certain pieces of her collection. It ended up being a fun and peaceful event.
When we finished with her jewelry, she wanted to watch the Ellen DeGeneres show, so we turned on the television. It was an episode with Hillary Clinton as guest. She came on stage to a standing ovation and started talking about Russian collusion and all the reasons why she lost the election. I was still in the middle of my concussion I'd given myself a week earlier. I'm not sure if it was the glare from the snow outside or constant excuses coming from Hillary, but my head started pounding so I went to the dining room for a few minutes to work on the puzzle someone started and let my mom finish her show.
There were moments of crying here and there for everyone with my aunt, uncle, sister, cousins and their husbands and kids coming in and out of the house. By Saturday my mom was pretty out of it. She mostly slept the entire day. Sunday, She seemed to have one foot in this world and one foot in another. I can't remember exactly what happened on Sunday, but my sister sort of crashed and decided she was leaving and not coming back and we still didn't have a nurse or an aid to help at night. I decided to stay Sunday night , not wanting to leave my 89 year old grandma there alone if my mom were to pass in the middle of the night.
Saturday night, I was thankful we had the chance to sit together with my sister, cousins, aunt and uncle in the den with my mom and talk about memories we all had. I asked my mom what her favorite house to live in had been since we'd moved so many times and this led to more memories shared. When we were done my mom turned to me and said " I know why you guys are doing this, it's because I'm dying". She was always good at making situations more awkward than they had to be.
Sunday night was awful. I finally decided to sleep on the the couch parallel to my moms hospice bed at about midnight. She had slept almost the entire day so I'd expected the same overnight. We had called a hospice nurse earlier that evening to check her and she let us know she was close. As I laid there, the grandfather clock in the hallway would give its 15 minute notification reminding me I still hadn't slept. Each hour, it would chime louder almost mocking me that it had made another 60 minute loop towards morning. My mom, who had mostly slept the entire day suddenly became very active. Se wasn't exactly coherent, but she was asking for water or Vernors every 10 minutes. She was reaching for things in front of her that weren't there, a movement I would learn the next day from the hospice nurse was quite common in the final stages of life.
That night realizing that I went to college for accounting rather than nursing and contemplating the reality that if something happened I was way out of my area of expertise...I cried, I prayed, the grandfather clock taunting me some more. My mom suddenly wide awake asked for a cinnamon roll or a piece of seven layer cake. I searched the kitchen high and low for either and came up empty. I was devastated. By the time I returned to tell her , she couldn't even remember she'd asked and was content with more Vernors. I knew as morning came I was going to hire a professional to help us the next night. At about 4:30 in the morning I'd had no sleep yet. My uncle came in on little sleep himself from the living room and took over until 7:30 am so I could get a few hours sleep until the next day started all over again.
The next day my grandmother called a woman named Sadye who had several people working for her, the family had used her company for my own grandfather when he passed away just a few months prior. That night at 8 pm, a tall 68 year old black woman knocked on the door. Her name was Carolyn. My grandmother asked me to show her where everything was. I took her through the kitchen to the large coat hall closet to hang up her hat and coat. In her hands she carried a large black King James Bible with precious gold letters declaring its content and purpose. You all know what bible stands for right? B-I-B-L-E Basic instructions before leaving earth. I told her I was a believer too and I took her in the den to meet my mom who still hadn't really been cognitively with us since Saturday evening.
We all sat around the hospice bed on the large black leather couches, I was on her left side at the end of the couch, my cousins and uncle and grandmother all filling in the balance of the two couches and Carolyn sitting in a small folding chair kitty corner to all of us.. Carolyn stood up, walked around the bed leaned over my mom, put her hand on my moms center and started quietly praying in Jesus' name. She was praying for the battle, angels to respond, demons to be conquered, all by the blood of the Lamb. Because of my position to my mom I could see and hear what was happening, it was like someone throwing a cold glass of water in your face as you're sleeping to wake you up. When I least expected it, I had this refreshing drink of water after travelling through dry sands on empty for days.
I began to realize, once again, the magnitude and absolute awesome brilliance of God who was doing something right in front of my eyes. When I wasn't even praying for it, when I'd given up praying for a way, and had settled on His goodness despite the obvious outcome, He sent this woman who prayed in HIS NAME, in front of my family members who would have never had the nerve to stop a black woman from what she was doing. Had she been young or white, or me, they would have stopped her...but Carolyne could totally pull it off .
When the gravity of the situation it hit me, I just started crying...crying for joy, crying at the sound of His name, crying for the sister in the Lord he sent, crying that He was still with us.
I'm not sure what happened, but everyone left the room except for Carolyn and I. I was still so overwhelmed by what was happening. I ventured to tell her I was a believer but had been asked not to say the name Jesus anymore, but I started hyperventilating a little I couldn't get the words out, I couldn't say His name without losing my breath. And when I finally could, I suddenly felt like a six year old child who had just been far away from home and rescued. I literally just started weeping with joy and heartache and she embraced me and just held me as I cried like a baby. It was a moment of total humiliation on my part and complete compassionate Godly humanity on her part. She said she'd been on her way to another house when Sadye had mentioned our situation. God started directing her to our house and she was realizing why. The Lord says in Matthew 18:20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them." and there He was. We needed her presence and faith. We needed Him there. And only He could make that possible. For days, I had been surrounded by my family, and then He brought my spiritual family, my sister in the faith I hadn't even prayed for, and it was awesome.
That Monday night, Carolyne and I stood over my mom and held hands and each laid one hand on my mom and prayed, in the name of Jesus, over her. My mom reached up and grabbed our hands and held tight halfway through an intense prayer. Later that night, Carolyn said my mom had opened her eyes, looked up and lifted her right hand like she was praising God.
Now the day before in the morning my mom had said to me "Oh Gloria, I'm so glad you came to visit me" I said "of course, remind me how we know each other"..."Oh you were my elementary school teacher, you taught English". I'm not God and I don't know everything but I started thinking because of the progression my mom appeared to be going through that perhaps God was walking her through her own life story, from beginning to end. I kept saying, "I think He is dealing with her". I still believe He had three days on earth to keep her still and walk her through her own life and present Himself to her and give her understanding of salvation through Him.
The next day, Carolyn had just left finishing her twelve hour shift. I was sitting in the kitchen with my back against a large glass sliding door across the table from my aunt. We were talking and I noticed her face just freeze as she was staring at something behind me. I turned and looked out the sliding door and there maybe 30 feet from us in my grandmothers small pine treed backyard of her condo association oat 14 mile and Drake in the suburbs of Detroit stood what appeared to be a wolf. I mean a straight up Jack London, white fang, call of the wild looking fuzzy mangy beautiful terrifying and large wolf. It stood there for about 15 seconds before it ran off. We both looked at each other like "Did that really just happen"? My aunt knows animals. Her husband has been a vet for more than 3 decades. She's been everywhere in the world, she's played with elephants in Thailand, obsessed over tigers in Africa. They've nursed back to health injured animals from wallaby's to mountain lions in their own homes over the years. She said "that's a wild wolf" and I agreed. No one would have ever believed us if just one of us witnessed it because it was so out of place. I have no idea what it meant, but I knew there was a battle for my moms soul going on right in the next room.
Wednesday morning we were all in the kitchen. My aunt and I sitting in the same chairs as the day before with our laptops open hoping to catch up on work we'd been neglecting and of course hoping to again see the wolf reappear in the backyard. It was almost noon and I'd been drinking coffee from a disposable cup I'd purchased the day before. My grandma had been complaining about all the dirty coffee cups with all the people in and out of the house so I picked up a pack of hot disposable cups from walmart. We'd all been talking that morning about how we thought this day could be her final day, and for days prior about how awful it was to see her languishing there. But I kept saying " I think God is doing something with her and He's not done yet. He'll release her when He's done."
My aunt had this terrible feeling in her stomach she woke up with , and she'd had dreams of the wolf that night before. It was her husbands birthday and she just felt terrible that her sister would likely die on her his birthday. I looked up at the disposable cup I was using and realized it had a message written on it. I read it to myself . From top to bottom in bold black font in striped shades from white to grey to darker shades of grey and then finally green it said: "NO, NOT YET, CLOSER, ALMOST THERE, READY". I said "Oh my God" knowing immediately God was giving me a clear message it would be today. I showedmy aunt firs sitting across the tablet and she said "Oh my God". My uncle standing near came over to see what it said because of our reactions. I was still so stunned at the message, I didn't even notice my uncle had left and went immediately to my moms bedside after he saw the cup and he said "I love you Patty", she opened her eyes and took what he thought was her last breath. He yelled something and I looked up and could tell he was visibly upset standing in the hallway outside the den. I said "He's upset" and we all ran to the room to see what happened. I looked at my mom and saw her take one more breath, then she was done. He was done. Literally 30 seconds after the message, my mom passed.
They all cried and I can't explain it, but God filled me up with this incredible supernatural peace. It was somewhat surreal, everyone was hunched over crying and I started looking up towards the ceiling considering that my mom had just left her body and was not yet gone and could see the scene unfolding beneath her. My uncle wailed, my aunt wailed, it was heartbreaking and sad and awesome at the same time. I think God saved her. I have incredible evidence and peace of mind that He just might have done something I thought was completely off the table. I think He did a Hail Mary, if I can speak football terms. I went to the bathroom, put my hands in the air and just praised Him. It was the final day of Hanukkah.
She died on December 18, seven days before Christmas. I was able to prepare her funeral, go home get my kids and come back for her funeral and then enjoy a small simple Christmas with my family at home. In the days after, I shared with a few people what happened. Many of our friends and family while we sat Shiva at my cousins house. Some people told me they were so encouraged to hear the story of Gods miraculous saving grace and what I experienced at my moms death bed...that they had unsaved friends and family members, some with terminal cancer. One man at Meijers was so excited to hear the story he couldn't wait to tell everyone he knew, he dubbed it his Christmas story that year. My hope is to share my experience and give you hope in hopeless situations. God is Good. He can do it, even when we can't. He can do the impossible. Even when our strength fails us, He is strong, He is brilliant, He can do amazing things. Believe.
