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                My mom told me once that, as a kid, she had often wondered why so many gospel songs talked about heaven with such longing. She said the older she got, the more she understood it because you reach a certain point in your life when there are more people that you love on the other side of eternity than there are on this side. She had reached that point not long after her father passed away, arriving there after many years of losing the good ones, the ones who made life worth living – who filled it with enough laughter and grace to make even the hardest day doable. Friends and family had travelled on ahead, leaving a hole where their light used to be, and she was weary of it. She held on, though, fighting the good fight for my dad’s life as he endured hospital stay after hospital stay.

I knew, even then, that when he left us, Dad might take more of her with him than would be left behind. He was, in all his frailty, the rock that she leaned on and the strength she could count on when her own failed her. Because I often filled in for Dad, taking her to the store and helping her with things around the house, I know better than most that, though he wasn’t able to travel with her in body, he was always with her in spirit – and she with him. They had been kids when they met, but Mom said she knew instantly that he was the one. She wasn’t sure she wanted to believe it, but she knew. They built a little world of their own, and they always found their way back to it, regardless of what life threw their way.

                My dad, a sack of bones near the end, had within him a ferocity that defied explanation. Time and time again, doctors would tell us to prepare for the worst – he won’t make it this time, they would say – only to have him come back to us. Each battle took its toll, of course, so he always came home a little weaker, a little more defeated. We learned, though, not to easily count the man out. He was Samson in a broken body, supernaturally capable of amazing things. Yet, over and over again, we prepared our hearts for the day he would bring the temple down.

                Along with my mom and my younger brother, I held my dad’s hand as he breathed his last, just as I had held my grandfather’s a few years earlier. My mom was only half herself from that day forward, trying to lose herself in time with friends, in the school children she loved so dearly, and in my wedding plans. She hurt. I hurt. We all hurt, and unfortunately, we sometimes took it out on each other. At the end of our bigger arguments, we would both cry and finally let go of some of the pain, but it was a hard process – and not at all enjoyable.

                We were just starting to get past all the sadness when my mom suffered a stroke two short days before my wedding. I cancelled my honeymoon, but she wouldn’t hear of me postponing the wedding – not just for her. After the ceremony, my wife and I went to see her in tux and wedding gown. She cried and cried; as she would any time the wedding came up thereafter. She struggled through her time in the hospital, and the rest of us struggled with her. She made it through rehab, but was still confined to a wheelchair most of the time. It was the hardest time of her life, no doubt, but I felt closer to her than I ever had. I got to take care of her, you see, and she could see my love for her in my sacrifices – in my devotion. At least, I prayed that she could see it.

                We celebrated our birthdays together as we did each year. Mom was born May the 20^th while my birthday trailed two days later. I cooked dinner. Mom made dessert.  Nothing fancy, but it was nice. I guess, perhaps, I had so much hope for her future – believing, as I did, that she would walk again and eventually get back to her job as a school counselor – that I couldn’t see how broken mom still was, in spirit as well as body. Two days later, the morning of my birthday, we couldn’t get her to wake up. We took her to the hospital where she had emergency surgery to stop some internal bleeding that was the result of her blood pressure meds. The surgery went well and she made it out of ICU and into a regular room for just a few hours before her heart stopped.

                I was alone with her those few moments before her death. I will not recount everything that was said, but I can say that she questioned God’s purpose – the plan of having her survive her stroke and endure everything that came after – when she would have rather gone on to be with my dad. I told her that I wasn’t sure I understood either, but that I had faith that it wasn’t in vain. When her heart stopped and they rushed her back to ICU, I begged God to let her stay, to heal her body and heart and let her stay with the people who loved her. God’s answer was not the one I prayed for. I said my goodbyes while a nurse performed CPR. Mom left and part of me left with her.

                Like Mom, I now understand those old gospel songs. I know the depth of that longing for a home you have never seen. Each year, there are more and more people on that side of life’s byway and, each year, the longing to join them grows. There is, no doubt, great purpose in our time here, the years we are given to love and be loved, to struggle and strive for meaning. Yet, when at last that struggle is over – whenever that blessed day shall come – I’ll not despair for those I leave behind, for I, too, will be waiting just over the hill – waiting for that glorious reunion on a distant shore.