Oh let me remember Mom’s hugs—the rounded softness of her shoulders, her scent, the hum of her voice with our heads pressed together.   I wanted one of her hugs the night she lay dying.   The last one we exchanged was at the airport in December after Christmas. I think I remember it, but the memory might be blended with the airport hug in November after Thanksgiving. They were similar—affectionate, moving, heavy with unspoken emotion.   The last hug I gave her was during her final breaths, early in the morning. By then, my dad and sister had pushed her hospice bed flush against the bed...

Soon after Mom’s death, I longed increasingly to know what she was thinking and feeling. Did she know how we were doing? Did she even need to know? Only the Lord could answer these questions that arose from my well of sorrow. So I expressed my thoughts to Him during a morning walk in softly falling snow. Later that afternoon I had some free time and did some exercises in my parents’ basement. I put on a CD that my mom had enjoyed. A particularly worshipful and reverent song came on, an anthem of exaltation to the Lord. With great crescendo it moved into these lyrics:   Blessing and honor Glory...

I don’t remember much about the couple of days following my mother’s death, besides writing her obituary and sitting with my entire family in the funeral director’s office. But I do remember the crush of physical and emotional exhaustion, the sickening awfulness that I can’t describe. I had no idea what to say to God or what to read in the Bible. I’m not sure I was able to respond to Him with anything other than outpourings of grief. But at some point during those first days without her—those days of wordless prayer—I felt a desperate need to worship God. I needed someone else’s words, someone else’s...

My mom was like a ruby in the center of a gold setting.    Sandra J. Chantelau January 1, 1951-February 16, 2010   The gold is the life of our family, and she was the gem at the heart of it, radiating from the inside out. Her light and beauty were gentle, softly illuminating our lives, sensitively weaving all of us together like a silken scarlet thread. When we lost her, we lost a big chunk of our hearts, as if that lovely thread had been pulled from the tapestry—compassionately taken by a Father who said it was time for her to come home to Him. Yet, the fabric of our family will by no means...

The storm did its worst. It roared and cracked and thundered, splitting my world into a before and an after. The tempest has passed, leaving devastation in its wake.   My mother is gone.   Was it I who just wrote that beauty and holiness are “both present in the most terrifying of floods and gales that shake us to the core of our being”? Did I think I could sing a song in the fiercest of storms?   Maybe, if a song can be composed of tears.   Last week my mother took her last breath. By the time I got here to my parents’ house, she was already unconscious, lying on a hospital bed in...