Three Coffins and No Funeral

I saw three people die this week.

This is what happens when you spend much of your time at a hospice center.

When I went through those hospice doors for the first time I expected to exit them like the families I saw through the week, who walked slowly out with broken faces behind the covered body of someone they loved...

The doctor called in the family because my mom was not expected to live more than a day. She did. She is very tough.

She was moved to a hospice facility because she was not expected to live more than a few days. She did. She is very tough.

Now my frail, fragile mother keeps outliving the defined 'term' of her terminal disease.

I am thankful for those term extensions because we got to share some moments I have packed away in my heart...for the years ahead when I won't have her anymore.

Like every other important thing in her life, my mother is dying independently, on her own terms, and with a touch of classy stubbornness that makes her so special.

Now she is at home to spend the rest of her days. She knows it all defined by God's 'term' after all.