Private Holy Week
2019-04-05
Lent is a time of spiritual struggle. We change the food we eat. Pray more. Focus on being the Christians we aspire to be. All the while we have Pascha before us. Lent ends with death, burial and resurrection. Holy Week is full of double expectation. We enter into the hardest stretch of the year with services every night. We focus on the events of Holy Week leading up to Jesus’ death and burial. Yet as we gather the flowers to decorate the grave for Good Friday, we make Pascha cheese and fill the Easter baskets with the goodies for the Feast of Feasts.
This week is my personal holy week. It’s three in the morning and I can’t sleep. I sat with Mom tears running down my cheeks watching her sleep sometimes in complete peace sometimes with the restlessness of a bad dream. When my sister or aunt and I are caring for her she wakes up and looks at us with longsuffering at our loving incompetent ministrations. This is her holy week as well.
People try to comfort me with reminders of heaven and what is to come in the next life. I’m stuck with Jesus crying before the tomb of Lazarus or Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane asking if the cup can pass but knowing and accepting that His will be done. I kiss Mom’s head, stroke her face, hold her hand. Being with her could encompasses every minute of every day, but there are preparations to be made. Yesterday there were meetings and calls to funeral homes and priests. In the evening Kimmy and I went shopping for black dresses. The funeral services loom large ahead and and obstruct the glimpse of the resurrection beyond. I hate being here. I hate going through death.
Mom was very clear about what her wishes were for end of life hospital decisions, but the funeral arrangements are harder to navigate. Mom bought her cemetery plot on the grounds of an Orthodox Monastery and described the kind of simple wooden casket she wanted. The funeral she described is harder to bring about. There’s a lovely book floating around describing a person’s family gathered around the body, washing it with tenderness, reading psalms over it until the church service and burial the next day. What a lovely picture of the care and gentle handling of their loved one’s remains. It reminds me of having a homebirth. How the book contrasts home care of the loved one’s body with the cold refrigeration of the funeral home or the unnatural process of embalming.
I would do anything for my mom. Well, almost anything. There was that time that she wanted to keep bees in her room. I spent a lot of yesterday calling around trying to see how to give mom the most natural loving funeral and burial I can. It was a frantic day trying to balance everything Mom wanted with what is humanly possible for me. Last night I fell asleep anxious with indecision.
Restless dreams rang a silent alarm at three-thirty in the morning. Too anxious to sleep, I came to the living room and sat for hours watching Mom sleep, praying for some clarity, soothed by the sacred music we had playing in the background. Regret gripped my insides and the ever-present nausea from this week wrestled with hunger pains left over from the meager dinner I ate before leaving to pick Sophia up from driving class.
It seemed sad that yesterday when we saw Mom revive, open her eyes and smile at people, I called and visited funeral homes and interviewed people who had experience with home preparation. All day long Mom saw me stopping by to kiss her head or smooth her forehead, but it was Jonah who stayed by her side until she said her last, “I love you.” Knowing that he and she had that miraculous opportunity was what having Mom here in our home in her last days is all about.
I will lay down for a bit before getting the kids up for school. May God have mercy and show me the way in which to go.
______
Around nine this morning I called another funeral home that was able to give me most everything I wanted. They insist on preparing her body themselves, clothing her and putting her in the coffin. Those were things I desired to do for Mom, but overnight I had come to the place to accept help. They were willing to use our beautiful cedar coffin for a fee. They will pick Mom up and we will follow to sign the papers and go over all the arrangements. The next evening, or Sunday evening, if she dies on Saturday, they will bring her body to the church and one of their staff members will stay with her while we take turns chanting psalms near the casket until the funeral service the next morning. From there to the monastery cemetery ninety miles away. At least that’s the plan now. Because they agreed to not embalm, it will be a closed casket ceremony. I like having open caskets, but not being embalmed was Mom’s desire.
After making the arrangements I sat with Mom and told her it was all figured out. Then I read psalms to her and the book of Philippians, my favorite epistle. I felt like both Mom and God were speaking to my heart as I read the words. They were a balm to my soul. My faith was renewed. Yesterday’s burden lifted. Now is the time to sit with Mom and be with her in the last days and hours.
Today Mom has slept peacefully. Over the years together Mom and I weren’t ones to sit and gab. Being together in the same room has been the greatest comfort for us both. Today in the quietness of waiting we have enjoyed each other. She also likes to have musicals going on the TV in the living room where we have the hospital bed. Kimmy and I broke out the honey mustard pretzels, caramel filled chocolate bars and ginger beer for a cruncher party. It’s been a day of waiting much like waiting for a baby to be born waiting for the contractions to come closer together until the birth is imminent.
This evening Mom’s pulse is low, and her breathing is getting more difficult. I turned up her oxygen and am waiting for my sister Ellen to arrive before giving her some of the medications which hospice has provided to make her more comfortable. Lord have mercy.
2019-04-05
Lent is a time of spiritual struggle. We change the food we eat. Pray more. Focus on being the Christians we aspire to be. All the while we have Pascha before us. Lent ends with death, burial and resurrection. Holy Week is full of double expectation. We enter into the hardest stretch of the year with services every night. We focus on the events of Holy Week leading up to Jesus’ death and burial. Yet as we gather the flowers to decorate the grave for Good Friday, we make Pascha cheese and fill the Easter baskets with the goodies for the Feast of Feasts.
This week is my personal holy week. It’s three in the morning and I can’t sleep. I sat with Mom tears running down my cheeks watching her sleep sometimes in complete peace sometimes with the restlessness of a bad dream. When my sister or aunt and I are caring for her she wakes up and looks at us with longsuffering at our loving incompetent ministrations. This is her holy week as well.
People try to comfort me with reminders of heaven and what is to come in the next life. I’m stuck with Jesus crying before the tomb of Lazarus or Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane asking if the cup can pass but knowing and accepting that His will be done. I kiss Mom’s head, stroke her face, hold her hand. Being with her could encompasses every minute of every day, but there are preparations to be made. Yesterday there were meetings and calls to funeral homes and priests. In the evening Kimmy and I went shopping for black dresses. The funeral services loom large ahead and and obstruct the glimpse of the resurrection beyond. I hate being here. I hate going through death.
Mom was very clear about what her wishes were for end of life hospital decisions, but the funeral arrangements are harder to navigate. Mom bought her cemetery plot on the grounds of an Orthodox Monastery and described the kind of simple wooden casket she wanted. The funeral she described is harder to bring about. There’s a lovely book floating around describing a person’s family gathered around the body, washing it with tenderness, reading psalms over it until the church service and burial the next day. What a lovely picture of the care and gentle handling of their loved one’s remains. It reminds me of having a homebirth. How the book contrasts home care of the loved one’s body with the cold refrigeration of the funeral home or the unnatural process of embalming.
I would do anything for my mom. Well, almost anything. There was that time that she wanted to keep bees in her room. I spent a lot of yesterday calling around trying to see how to give mom the most natural loving funeral and burial I can. It was a frantic day trying to balance everything Mom wanted with what is humanly possible for me. Last night I fell asleep anxious with indecision.
Restless dreams rang a silent alarm at three-thirty in the morning. Too anxious to sleep, I came to the living room and sat for hours watching Mom sleep, praying for some clarity, soothed by the sacred music we had playing in the background. Regret gripped my insides and the ever-present nausea from this week wrestled with hunger pains left over from the meager dinner I ate before leaving to pick Sophia up from driving class.
It seemed sad that yesterday when we saw Mom revive, open her eyes and smile at people, I called and visited funeral homes and interviewed people who had experience with home preparation. All day long Mom saw me stopping by to kiss her head or smooth her forehead, but it was Jonah who stayed by her side until she said her last, “I love you.” Knowing that he and she had that miraculous opportunity was what having Mom here in our home in her last days is all about.
I will lay down for a bit before getting the kids up for school. May God have mercy and show me the way in which to go.
______
Around nine this morning I called another funeral home that was able to give me most everything I wanted. They insist on preparing her body themselves, clothing her and putting her in the coffin. Those were things I desired to do for Mom, but overnight I had come to the place to accept help. They were willing to use our beautiful cedar coffin for a fee. They will pick Mom up and we will follow to sign the papers and go over all the arrangements. The next evening, or Sunday evening, if she dies on Saturday, they will bring her body to the church and one of their staff members will stay with her while we take turns chanting psalms near the casket until the funeral service the next morning. From there to the monastery cemetery ninety miles away. At least that’s the plan now. Because they agreed to not embalm, it will be a closed casket ceremony. I like having open caskets, but not being embalmed was Mom’s desire.
After making the arrangements I sat with Mom and told her it was all figured out. Then I read psalms to her and the book of Philippians, my favorite epistle. I felt like both Mom and God were speaking to my heart as I read the words. They were a balm to my soul. My faith was renewed. Yesterday’s burden lifted. Now is the time to sit with Mom and be with her in the last days and hours.
Today Mom has slept peacefully. Over the years together Mom and I weren’t ones to sit and gab. Being together in the same room has been the greatest comfort for us both. Today in the quietness of waiting we have enjoyed each other. She also likes to have musicals going on the TV in the living room where we have the hospital bed. Kimmy and I broke out the honey mustard pretzels, caramel filled chocolate bars and ginger beer for a cruncher party. It’s been a day of waiting much like waiting for a baby to be born waiting for the contractions to come closer together until the birth is imminent.
This evening Mom’s pulse is low, and her breathing is getting more difficult. I turned up her oxygen and am waiting for my sister Ellen to arrive before giving her some of the medications which hospice has provided to make her more comfortable. Lord have mercy.