Life Is Changed, Not Taken Away

The beautiful flowers around [my mother's] bedside were like a gorgeous promise of the new life to come. In winter everything seems so dead—the ground, the trees, and all the shrubbery around the house, and then in a few short months things begin to stir, palpably, and life bursts forth again. Mother had seen seventy-five autumns. Seventy-five times had she seen those promises fulfilled.

Photo by Rikonavt on Unsplash.

Life is changed, not taken away. "In him the hope of blessed resurrection has dawned, that those saddened by the certainty of dying might be consoled by the promise of immortality to come. Indeed for your faithful, Lord, life is changed not ended, and, when this earthly dwelling turns to dust, an eternal dwelling is made ready for them in heaven" (Preface I of Masses for the Dead). Someone may ask, 'How are dead people raised, and what sort of body do they have when they come back?' They are stupid questions.

Whatever you sow in the ground has to die before it is given new life and the thing that you sow is not what is going to come; you sow a bare grain, say of wheat or something like that (1 Co 15:35-37). These were comforting things to talk about and to think about, those all-too-short afternoons by mother's bedside.

Outside, the maple trees blazed, cast their leaves about them, and stood gaunt and clean against the sky. Asters and chrysanthemums still bloomed in the garden. One morning I prayed to the Little Flower, whose picture is over the foot of my bed, that she would especially look after my mother. I reminded her of her own grief at her father's long dying. That night [a friend] brought me in some dried blessed roses. The next day, a friend brought a tiny bouquet with lace paper about it made up of roses and carnations, and my mother greeted it with a smile and held it in her hands a few times that afternoon. And it was that evening that she died, so quietly, so gently, saying but a few moments before to my brother, "Kiss me goodnight and run along, because I want to go to sleep."

A week later, when I went to Poughkeepsie to visit my three aunts…and to go with them to offer up a Mass of thanksgiving for my mother's most peaceful death, we came out of Saint Peter's Church that misty morning to be greeted by a brilliant rose in the garden next to the church. And when we arrived home for breakfast, there was a bouquet telegraphed to us from Florida, and in the centre of the fall flowers were two lovely roses. The Little Flower was prompt and generous indeed in her message.

I wrote the account because I like to show my gratitude by telling others of such favours. Perhaps, too, it may comfort others who have sore and lonely hearts over the approaching death of a near one. Life is changed, not taken away, and what a glorious change in these sad times, after a long and valiant life.