When the Music Fades

From her perspective, I suppose I was sitting at about 10 o'clock- watching. To this day, I don't know how long I held that post. I remember the view fairly well, though. I was next to her on my knees watching a spot on her neck where I could see her pulse. Occasionally my head was bowed. Once in a while I looked around the room at the crowd of faces blurred by tears. I remember looking over at my dad, with his gray balding head bowed in constant prayer as he relived a scene from long ago. A few times my gaze would flash to her look of panic as she struggled for a breath, sometimes heaving her tired body forward. But mostly, I was fixated on that spot waiting for the next beat to come.

Only a few days earlier I had spoken to Chris, my brother-in-law and gotten a truer picture of how things were.

"She looks really bad, Val. I know you just saw her, but she has really declined over the last few days."

My sister never really let on about how badly the cancer was progressing. When Michal Kate was ten days old we had borrowed an RV from a friend and driven to Missouri to see Vicki. She came to the family farm outside Buffalo, MO with her kids. She was thin, but doing fairly well. I remember the laughs we shared as two year-old Connor asked to see my Grandma Edie's breasts and how he reacted with horror placing his hands over his backside when someone asked to see his "bottom teeth." It was the final countdown of the smiles.

We had returned to Abilene actually feeling pretty good about how Vicki was doing. But in that phone conversation with Chris an urgency had been planted within me that I could not shake. We decided to go back to Missouri for another visit. We arrived on a Saturday almost exactly 7 years ago. In spite of what I had learned from Chris, I was shocked when I saw her. While she had long had the slender physique of a runner, she was now so thin she resembled a skeleton lightly draped with gray skin. She was at home and Hospice caregivers had her on a respirator. Still, there was a light in her eyes when she saw Connor and Michal Kate that could only come from a devoted aunt. We have a picture of Vicki holding Michal Kate in her lap and gazing at her in wonder. Chris called the picture "Hello and Goodbye." She kissed her repeatedly and even wept a little.

"Every day, from now on," she said, looking over at me, "the first ten kisses you give your kids will be from me." In saying that, she began a tradition in our family where I try to kiss my kids 21 times a day. The logic there is that if she gets ten, I have get 11 or she wins.

During that Saturday, we were host to a steady stream of well-wishers. But as the night fell, it became quite clear that things were getting worse. My brother Vance, who was also there, and I put in a call to our dad telling him he should come to St. Louis. We also called our brother.

Wearing blue pajamas with clouds and sitting in her blue leather chair in the reading nook of the master bedroom, Vicki struggled through the night as we prayed over her. As the day dawned we felt the time was getting close. I tried to call dad again. Colleen answered and upon hearing my urgency said they were on the road and dad was driving over 100 miles per hour but they were still about 30 miles out. I was a 13 hour trip, after all. I remember hearing dad pull up and seeing him run to Vicki's side. Though I will ever be the strong-willed child who butts heads with his dad, my heart was broken for him that day as I watched him deal with the situation. Here was this man who had lost a wife to this same disease at almost the same age as my sister and who was now losing a daughter the same way.

So again, here I was kneeling next to her watching the uneven pulse beating in the spot on her neck. Looking around the room, I saw our little band of soldiers in prayer. Some were valiantly trying to hold off the hosts of Heaven, wanting desperately for Vicki to hold on, engaged in the struggle between the body yearning for healing and the soul wanting the same- a common struggle with very different outcomes. I, on the other hand, felt more like a soldier in an honor guard- dispatched to play a role in a ceremony or welcome a visiting dignitary- because as I came to realize, there was One in our midst and we were on holy ground. Spontaneous prayer and praise were breaking out that Sunday morning, occasionally interspersed with wailing. Chris sang to his bride broken tones of her favorite, "Great is Thy Faithfulness," or "I Praise You, Lord." Her three children came and sat in her lap to be with her and help escort her spirit to its destiny. At one point, one of our small number appeared with a tray of communion he had confiscated from some unsuspecting church in the area. As we communed one last time in her company she again heaved herself forward into Chris' arms in one last attempt for breath and comfort. As I watched this scene wherein he held her and stroked her and sang and cried and prayed and spoke to her I begged God to let her rest.

She was just so tired.

A family friend and physician standing behind me must have watching the same spot on which I had been fixated for what seemed like days. Because as I watched it beat for the last time, he approached Vicki and checked her with his stethoscope.

"She's gone Chris."

That holy moment was a pivotal one for me in my walk. I learned so much from my sister from the way she lived and from the way she died. She was a fun-loving follower of Christ who thumbed her nose at convention and chose instead to serve people in Jesus' name. Mere days before she died she was interpreting for the deaf at church though encumbered with a wheelchair and oxygen tank. And in the months when she fought the cancer that robbed her of her health but never her spirit, Vicki was a pillar of strength and faith and so many learned from that example. I was one of them. As such, I ponder...

What might have been the scene when another confused and desperate group was trying to either hold at bay or host a band of angels. As they communed together one last time, did they understand the impact of that meal? Did they worship in their final moments together? Did they watch with bated breath as the course of history was altered by the death of someone about whom they cared deeply? Did they understand how they had been impacted? Was their faith simultaneously shaken and formed, tested and strengthened, taken and given?

In both cases, the Lord was there.

In one case, what happened created the sustenance for the other.

In both, Satan lost.

While I do not pretend that the scene of which I was a part had any significant impact on history, it was that experience that gave me more perspective on the one that took place a couple thousand years ago. It gave me a close-to-home object lesson of the victory we have over the sting of death. It gave me a personal experience of how the meal we share at the Lord's table is one where we share struggles.
Where we praise.
Where we lament.
Where we pray.
Where we love each other.
Where we invite the peace of Christ into the lives of all present.

And...

Where at times we lunge into the Everlasting Arms, desperate to cling to the Breath of Heaven.

As we come to the table to which we are invited by our Savior, Guided by the Spirit and welcomed by God himself, we find there One big enough to overcome this world while at the same time intimate enough to care about our corner of it. And as He whispers peace to us, we are reminded that we are not alone. God has not abandoned us. Rather, once again we celebrate that He is calling us to Him. We will come as He sings over us: "How I love you. Child, I love you. How I love you."