A Layne Post
The room was heavy.
She sat hunched over showing me the oxygen tube that had come out, and she needed me to go get a nurse. Her breathing was short. I could hardly believe where the previous 5 days had brought her. Just the week before we chatted about my growing Karasi, babies, and the blessings that children are, even three girls! In this culture boys are prized, so I am often given a sad smile and a reassurance that the next will be a boy. (Next?) That day before I left I remember her saying, “Eu gosto de Mae de Anaya.” (I like Anaya’s mother. – Our equivalent to a casual ‘I love you’.)
This day, even in her agony, she smiled and asked about my girls. And then she winced. Her breast had been taken over by the cancer and had turned into an open wound full of pain and infection. Another tumor in her stomach had appeared just three days previous. It was now the size of a grapefruit. As I sat by her side, she asked me not to leave her. And so I stayed a few hours. Then my friend Alice arrived to sit with her, and then another sweet volunteer, and then I returned, and then Alice spent the night with her. It was not good for her to be alone.
The days to follow would be her last.
Laying down was no longer an option for her as she felt she could not breathe, so as often as I could be there I would go and wrap my arms around her to hold and kiss her weary head that hung in front of her body. When she spoke of this pain and this cancer passing, I spoke of the next life and the hope we find there. Indeed, it would pass. More often than not, however, we were silent. I found myself in a position I’ve been in before – begging for death. There comes a point when the most gracious, most merciful thing the Lord could do is to take this precious life into the next. And what I pray is for an easy, quick transition between the two worlds. In those moments death is not terrifying, continuing life like this is. And so I called out to Jesus. Between the pain and the morphine, she didn’t always make sense, but I cannot forget a clear moment when she looked up and into my eyes and with a smile asked how I was. Me. In her moment, she thought about me.
In my Christian American mind I felt her local family had failed her, leaving her too often alone, leaving me and my friends to care for her in these intimate last moments. I try to be gracious to cultural differences, but I struggled. I am so very thankful that on the night that she passed from this life to the next, it was her husband that was with her, not my friend Alice or me. In that way I believe the Lord was gracious.
And now we no longer pray for her, for she has been made new, but we pray for her family and her two young children that are left here with a large gap in their lives. We pray that Jesus will find His way to fill them up.