Walking Home

When the phone rang on Mothers’ Day afternoon, I wasn’t expecting to hear my cousin Trudy’s voice on the line. Her message, though, was one I had known would be coming. Aunt Frankie was back in the hospital with pneumonia, a UTI, and fluid around her heart. She hadn’t eaten anything for several days, and while she recognized family members, she wasn’t interacting with anyone and sometimes hallucinating. The doctor had confirmed that she had taken a turn for the worse and wanted the family to begin thinking about hospice care.

“We just wanted you to know,” Trudy said, but I wanted to see her while she was conscious. So I talked to Steve, made a few phone calls, and began throwing a few things into an overnight bag. The tee shirt I randomly grabbed to sleep in had a message that struck me as appropriate. Made for our church’s centennial celebration it read, “His Century: 100 Years of Holiness.”

Aunt Frankie’s century has truly been “His Century,” a sanctified life spent in consecration to God and for others. It began to dawn upon me that time shared in her presence would have a special sweetness as she drew closer and closer to Heaven.

As I made the drive down, lines from a couple of Christian ballads blended together inside my head: “…Walking her home, holding her hand, trying to make sense of it all.” I didn’t know what condition she would be in by the time I arrived, but prayed that I might offer some small comfort.

I opened the door to the hospital room and saw her lying long and thin under the covers, a blue-gray cast to her face. She beamed at me as I walked in. And good news! She had actually eaten a few bites from her supper tray and wanted to talk.

Throughout the evening the room filled with loved ones, but by 9:00 we were alone. She updated me on several of her great-grands and asked about my family, very oriented and aware. She was especially interested in Brooke and Brayden. Soon she was ready to rest.

The coughing began in the quiet and wouldn’t stop. When I offered her water, she looked at me frightened and wild-eyed, clearly not knowing who I was. She talked in her sleep, sometimes just noiselessly moving her lips.

The fragile IV line providing antibiotics failed at about 2:30, stinging the tissue around it. Nurses tried in vain to start another but finally gave up. Aunt Frankie was wide awake then. I could hear slight rustlings from her bed, but mostly silence. I knew she was thinking, maybe worrying. When the first light of day began to filter into the room, she was ready to talk again.

“If they can’t get another line started,” she said, “this might be it.”

“It might be,” I agreed, “but if it is, you’ve been getting ready for this all of your life.”

She nodded yes. “I’m ready to go,” she said. “I just wish everyone I love was ready to go with me. I won’t be here to pray for them.”

“God’s not through answering all the prayers you’ve prayed,” I reminded her. “They’re all stored up, waiting for His perfect time.” She nodded again.

The doctor came, listened, and warned her sternly, “That’s some bad pneumonia in there. You’re going to have to eat if you want to get better.” By sheer will power, she ate her small serving of oatmeal and drank a few ounces of juice.

An anesthetist came in to attempt to start another line. “It will take a miracle,” Aunt Frankie told him.

“Pray,” he commanded.

We all held our breath, but in a few minutes another line was in place that he thought would hold for a while. “Did you pray?” he demanded to know, then confessed, “So did I.”

When we were alone again, we talked about the rehab wing of the nursing home where Aunt Frankie has been for the past several months. I had heard her say many times that she hoped never to have to live there, and I told her how much I admired her attitude of acceptance. “Why start having a bad attitude at this stage of my life?” she smiled, and I saw a faint glimmer in the eyes that used to twinkle brown, but like everything else about her are now gray.

I had packed a Bible and asked her if she wanted me to read a little. We turned to those words of comfort that have seen her through so many times before, ending with Romans 8:

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit….

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose….If God be for us, who can be against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

“…Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Her daughter and I talked on the phone several times that day. “Is Winona worried about me?” Aunt Frankie wanted to know.

I answered honestly. “I think she misses talking with you and knowing how you’re feeling about things. How you’re feeling inside about what’s happening to you.”

Aunt Frankie thought for a few moments. “I don’t know what I’d say.” Another pause. “I’m ready to go.”

She spoke a little about some of her regrets. “I wish I had understood some things better back then. I would have handled some things different. I don’t feel guilty or responsible. But I’m sorry.” All I could think of were the words to an old hymn I knew she had sung many times: “By and by when the morning comes, when the saints of God are gathered home, we will tell the story how we’ve overcome. We will understand it better by and by.” In my mind I could hear her singing along in the country soprano that I haven’t heard in many years. “Praise the Lord!” she said when I finished.

I stayed as long as I could. “If you’re not better, I’ll come again when school is out,” I promised.

“You’ve been my right arm,” she said. It was an undeserved compliment I will treasure. Even more, I will treasure these hours I was able to spend arm in arm with her as we walked together along this stretch of her road home.