The Hard, Sharp Point of Evangelization

What are we doing here, anyway? Preparing for what we are doing afterward.

Thursday morning two weeks before Thanksgiving, I had the privilege of sitting with my mother-in-law during the last couple hours of her life. It was quiet in the room. The only sounds were the gentle burble, like a fountain or a mountain stream, of the water in the oxygen supply, and the purposeful work of Mom’s each breath, laboring in a way that reminded me of my own experience laboring to give birth. (And she’d been there with me for one of those, as it happened.)

She’d received Last Rites. Those who could of the family had come to see her and say goodbye the evening before, and I’d silently prayed the Chaplet of Divine Mercy at that time. In the morning I’d woken up earlier than planned, and decided to pray a Rosary for her, which usually puts me right back to sleep.

It didn’t. I wasn’t sure what mysteries to pray, so I decided to start at Joyful and that I’d get as far into the decades in succession as the day allowed. Three years after first going into hospice, she was no longer responsive, no longer eating or drinking. We weren’t really sure how much longer we were in for, but probably today would be the day.

When I finished all five decades and wasn’t the least bit sleepy, I decided to go ahead over to the nursing home.

There were comings and goings — nurses, hospice workers, her roommate, and then it was just the two of us. I’d just missed my father-in-law, who had to go receive a cancer treatment and had asked me to come stay with Mom while he was out.

She worked, intensely, one breath after another. I went through my stash of prayer cards — St. Joseph, St. Michael, Our Lady of Joyful Hope, St. Anthony, not sure who else, probably prayed the day’s Mass readings, definitely invoked the Holy Trinity in various ways — then found a suitably untaxing bit of spiritual reading and settled in. I prayed silently, but also talked to Mom some, held her hand, all that. As one does.

She kept on working working working to breathe.

Mid-morning I was suddenly prompted to get back out that rosary. I launched into the luminous decades, and I did it aloud.

It is physically hard to pray “now and at the hour of our death” out loud with your voice with someone you love and who is, in fact, at the hour of her death. It is hard to concentrate on forming the syllables, on pushing past the inevitable cracking, and making words that the other person can hear.

But they were words she had known since probably before she was born. She had been a much prayed-for, nearly-lost only child, double-named for the Blessed Mother. She had loved being Catholic, even if, like most of us, she wasn’t always so good at it. I had not a single doubt about the sincerity of her faith.

And here is what happened. When she heard those first few Hail Mary’s, or maybe she couldn’t hear them at all, suddenly Mom quieted down. Her breathing became gentle and peaceful. Quiet, calm, easy breaths. One, and then rest, and then another, and a rest.

I kept going. A pair of student nurses from hospice looked in, then moved on.

That certainty of the Blessed Mother being present for this final spiritual battle was palpable in the room. And by that I mean not just mine but Mom’s certainty. It was like we’d finally gotten to the point of all this. Finally done the one thing left to do.

I felt like a bit of an idiot having not resumed my rosary any sooner.

But at least we had it then. Halfway through the third mystery, the Proclamation of the Kingdom, Mom’s breathing began pausing longer and longer.

Now here’s a funny story about that: I used to dread this mystery. When I first started praying the rosary with some regularity, I loved all the luminous mysteries except this middle one. It was so boring. It felt like blah blah blah. Needless to say that God worked some necessary turns in my heart over the years, and now it doesn’t feel boring at all.

The student nurses came back in, and it was good to have them there as we watched Mom’s final few breaths together. Gentle, peaceful, a breath and then rest, one more and rest, and finally it was only rest. The soul departed the body, and she had done the thing.

Artwork: Pieta at the Foot of the Cross by Ambrosius Benson, circa 1530.