Seven years ago, today...

My mom died.

I got a call from my dad late morning—I think. Over the previous six months, I’d received many such calls. He had called an ambulance to take her to the hospital after a bad night. He promised to get back to me in a bit, to update me on her condition and give me the doctor’s prognosis. I was planning to fly down for a visit in 6 days. It was my second quarter back in college, and it was also finals week. I settled in for an afternoon study session and tried not to worry about what was happening 800 miles away.

It would be ok. It always was

.

But, Mom had cancer, and months earlier the doctor had told us it was pretty much just a matter of time. The last two times I’d been down to visit had been spent more in the hospital than out. Yet, as I studied that afternoon, I was blindly planning to take over her doctor-prescribed diet and get her back on track toward recovery. I was in denial in its purest form.

And there, in the midst of that denial, came the call I never saw coming. The one that nothing could ever have prepared me for.

My father could hardly even speak, but the anguish in his voice was clear. Mom was gone.

Although the hours that followed still burn through my brain in a sort of chaotic, white-hot blur, I remember two things clearly: a primal scream I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried, torn from my throat in a mix of grief and rage. And my husband, who—of all things—despises tears, holding me tight as the storm raged.

This morning, I still carry the pain. It’s settled, of course. The gashes left on my soul that day have lost their ragged edges, and become another part of who I am. I am half an orphan. The woman who carried me within her own body, all those years ago, has been gone now for seven years. And just as I felt that day, I am still, in many ways, bereft.

But, much has happened over these last seven years. 

My mom has five, going on six, new great-grandchildren, in addition to the seven she already had. Her oldest daughter finally graduated from college, got a Master’s degree, and has done all she could to become the thing that Mom told her she should be so many years ago—an English teacher. I like to think she’s proud of me.

And I suppose that’s most of what’s behind my sadness this morning. 

Today marks seven years since she left without a goodbye. I was pretty mad at God about that for a while—couldn’t she just have been allowed one more week so I could see her again? Talk to her? Tell her I loved her?

But life is like that sometimes. We make plans, buy tickets, but the course of the journey is never really under our control.

In spite of this, I’ve spent the last year or so making plans and dreaming of possibilities once again. Buying tickets, so to speak, for a journey that was never really mine to make happen. I’ve done what I could in order to take that last step in my education, applying to the PhD. program of my dreams. And I wouldn’t have done it any other way. But making it a reality was never really in my hands. 

Although I’ve yet to receive the call telling me my dream has died, the writing is on the wall.

(Or, the rejection letters have been going out all week)

But, although I’m tempted to wallow a little, to focus for a while on that fading dream, I keep hearing a voice in my head. It sounds like Julie Andrews, but I think it’s really my mom.

“When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window.”(The Sound of Music was always one of her favorites, so I’m not surprised she’d quote it to me!)

So, another door has closed. You can’t have lived for over half a century without experiencing a lot of closed doors—and I have certainly experienced a few of my own.

But it was a closed door that turned me toward the path I stand at the end of today. A path that started outside an unexpected window, overlooking a view I would never have considered unless another dream had died. 

A view I wouldn’t have missed for the world!

Today, I’ll cry a little (ok, a little more). Our loved ones deserve to be grieved. Closed doors to be mourned.  But I’ll also be looking for a window to crack open. For a new dream to be born, like a rising sun casting beams into my quiet room. Because I know, as sure as I’m sitting here, I will find it.

After all, my mom said so.