There isn’t much I like better than a beautiful sunrise, especially the ones I get to see out of my back windows each morning. I have always talked to my kids about what a wonderful artist God is, how He gifts us with a new masterpiece each morning, how inspired I feel to walk into each new day as I see our neck of the woods come alive under the warmth of the sun after another long dark night.
Truthfully, the sunrise each morning gives me hope for all of life. It is like a lovely daily metaphor to remind me that the hard times will not last forever; a new bright day will dawn and things will get better. The Lord’s mercies are new every morning….great is His faithfulness.
My family is walking through a dark night at this moment in time. As the seasons change and new life breaks forth as Spring brings the earth out of the long, dark winter, my Memaw is at home in a hospital bed on hospice care. We have been staying with her in shifts around the clock lately as she developed a pretty nasty case of bronchitis. As I write this, in the middle of the night, she is speaking to people unseen by my eye about her childhood home.
Many times in my professional career I have had the great honor of being in the presence of one taking their last breath on this earth. As a Christian, I believe that dying is as much a part of life as being born, and truly that we should meet that day with as much celebration and anticipation as we do the day a child is born. It is a full circle moment. As the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:8, “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” What could be better?! Isn’t that worth celebrating?! What a beautiful day when we see sweet Jesus face to face!
But it is the “in between” that is hard….the lingering, the struggling, the dark before the dawn. That is where our faith is put to the test. Memaw has dementia, and the once vibrant, beautiful, gracious, hospitable, hard-working,and mischievous woman who loved me, and so many others, so well and so unconditionally, has been fading away from us for a while. As long as I can hear her breathing in her restless sleep, I can reach out to hold her hand or smooth her hair, and I can have a rare moment where she sees and knows me and calls me by name. So we hold on a little longer in this dark night.
But then I am reminded that God is with us in the dark night too. We don’t have to wait for dawn to see or feel His presence. He never leaves us. On an average or textbook level, patients with dementia should be more confused as the sun sets. “Sun downers” is a phenomenon well known to loved ones of those with dementia. But the past week, the evening time has been when Memaw knew each of her grandchildren’s names. It was when she asked me to just climb in the bed with her if I was spending the night. Just like when I would spend the night with her many years ago, last night she worried and fretted for at least half an hour that I wasn’t comfortable or didn’t have enough covers.
God knows what we need. He knows we need time to let go. He knows we are limited in our capacity as mere humans. He knows we need a sign sometimes, a little reminder that Heaven isn’t so far away. Our Heavenly Father cares so deeply for us that sometimes the statistically impossible occurs so sweetly despite the odds, only because He wants to remind us that He has it all under control, that He cares about our hurting hearts, and that He loves us more than even Memaw does. That’s some big love!
As dawn approaches on this new day, I pray that we all would remember where our real Home is, that we would all be reminded that death is not our enemy, and that Heaven has been the goal all along. Until I get there too, I’ll miss her laugh, her humor, her hugs, her biscuits, and her encouragement, but I will look for the reminders that she is close by–a brief catch of her perfume on the wind, a gorgeous rose bush that would just have likely grown in her yard as anywhere else on earth, the sparkle in my daughters eye as we create a little mischief or buy something beautiful to wear just because we want it. To wake up with the Lord means a unique and never-dying legacy lives on … .what a blessing to know that part of Memaw will never die as long as earth as we know it exists, and even greater that she’ll be waiting for us with open arms (and hopefully hot biscuits!) when we get there, too!
As Memaw always said, Jesus loves you, and so do I!
Happy Easter! He is risen, indeed!
Dr. Allison Key
