Do You Know Them?

November 11, 2019

So, it’s October 27, 2019 and I am sitting at my desk on a snowy Sunday morning trying to motivate myself to get into my workout room. The Bronco game comes on at 11:00 but the thought of watching them isn’t much motivation these days. The past week has been difficult, my 96-year-old mother has been admitted to hospice care and last week was given a couple of days to a week to live. As of this morning she is still hanging in there. While most people look at times like these with sympathy and pity that is not the case here. We have been really blessed to have the opportunity to be with her during her last days on earth, not something everyone gets to have the privilege of doing.

My mom has been a follower of Jesus for most of her life and although I can’t tell you when she actually accepted Jesus into her heart, I did discover the depth of her faith shortly after my father died in 2010. She had moved to the skilled nursing facility where she still resides, so we needed to clean out her apartment and start getting rid of things she didn’t need. In the process we came across several old photographs of longtime friends and family members. Some of the old frames were in really bad condition so we started working on taking the photos out of the frames and to our surprise we discovered that most of them contained notes and Bible verses that mom had written and inserted behind the photo. These weren’t random thoughts or musings, they were tailored to each person in the photo. We also found multiple journals filled with daily entries, many of which included scriptural references tied to her journaling. I am not writing about this to talk specifically about her faith, although it is a model we could all follow, I am writing about this to tell you how much I didn’t know about my mother. I was 57 years old at the time and discovering how many things I didn’t know about this wonderful woman.

For the past several years I have had the honor of taking care of my mother’s affairs, again not something everyone gets to do. We have spent countless afternoons in her room talking about the past, reading scripture, sharing some dark chocolate (her favorite food) and simply watching TV quietly while enjoying the experience of being together. She would periodically reach out and grab my hand and tenderly rub it against her cheek, all the while with a sweet smile. St. Francis of Assisi coined the phrase, “Preach the Gospel always and when necessary use words.” My mother should be credited with the phrase, “love always and when necessary use words.” The staff at her nursing home loved my mother because of the ways she modeled that phrase. She wasn’t a woman of many words, nor was she someone who demanded a lot of their time. She showed them great appreciation through her smile and when she did speak, the kind words she had from them.

So, I know my blog is titled “God, Love, Life, Lessons.” I have shared a little about her faith in GOD and the way she displays her LOVE. The fact that she lived 96 years says a lot about her LIFE. That brings me to the LESSON this holds for all of us. I know this is going to sound like a cliche but please hear me out. At times like these we are told that it points out how we should enjoy every moment with people who are special to us because we never know when they might be gone. I have discovered where we miss the mark is, we fail to spend those moments really getting to know the person – deeply. I thought I knew my mom but there were so many incredible things I never knew about her until very late in her life. It’s not just our parents we don’t take time to know deeply, it’s our kids, our wives, our closest friends. Take time to listen. Take the time to ask questions. Take the time to write things down because I guarantee you won’t remember everything. Then take the time to read what you wrote and remind yourself why that parent, child, spouse or friend is so important to you.

I lost my mother on October 31st – Halloween – her father’s birthday. She was excited to see Jesus and my Dad. I am excited to see her again some-day.