Ft Lauderdale Beach

Friday will be the 2nd month marker since my mom died. Including her death, I have either participated in or officiated at 5 funerals since then. I administered last rites to a person dying very much as my mom had died. His breathing echoed hers at the end and the memories of her last hours have resurfaced many times, at odd moments and not, since that agonizingly long Sunday afternoon. This is not unusual and the books all say it’s part of the grieving process. That knowledge though, is not particularly comforting.

I realize that more than being comforted, I am rediscovering hope. About three days after my mom died, I found myself in a quiet corner of my parents house just sobbing. In the midst of that moment of intense sorrow, I started speaking to my mom:  “Mom, even as an Episcopal priest I have always tiptoed very gently around the promises of life after death and resurrection. I have preferred to simply wait and see. Now, it is different. I have no more assurances than I had before. But I hope with the fiercest, most focused hope I have ever known, that our paths will cross again, that I will see you and be with you as you, my mom. Not some vague idea of you, not a gauzy, hazy insubstantial spirit. No. My hope is that you will be completely you. I will be so profoundly grateful to be with you again”

Today as I walked along the beach, I saw this person out on the water. It was a powerful image of the journey that my mom took all by herself that afternoon two months ago. I was reminded of the prayer “Oh God my boat is so small and your sea so big”. I still see the wake my mom left behind. Today, it is she who I want to see and be with.  In now way has the passage of time diminished that hope…