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"You have a good day now," whispered the priest in the intensive care unit for her ears only. He emphasized the "you". I remembered it seemed like they had a sacred little secret together that none of the family was meant to know.

After days of pain, my mother passed her final Saturday nearly pain free. When my brother came from out of town, she was sitting up in bed reading the newspaper. He appeared skeptical and thought my sister and I were alarmists. There was no way that Mom was nearing the end. She had a great day smiling and laughing with her family and enjoying the simple pleasures of reading a newspaper and watching a little TV.

The day before had been a harrowing time as our family struggled to mobilize the nursing home to call an ambulance to take her to the hospital. It seemed like the nurses thought we were fighting a losing battle. She would die anyway, the way all their clientele did. The nurse at the desk told us "The ambulance doesn't usually come to take them to the hospital." We were furious and insistent that she be moved to medical facility. My sister and I knew that the chances were slim, but we had to try something to help her.

So we were genuinely surprised when the next day she was sitting in a chair in the intensive care unit reading the newspaper as if the news mattered. As if she would be there to care about the news the next day. It appeared she had perhaps shaken death's embrace after all. But it was only a brief respite from the pain. Who relieved that pain? Was it intense pain killers? Was it the priest and a spiritual power that granted her one last day on Earth to be in relative comfort?

On Friday she had been delirious with pain, reliving a lifetime of experiences. There is the old tale that life passes before your eyes before death. My mother spent an entire day reliving her life. With eyes that were blank and staring as if her family was not in the room, she spoke in the present tense moment by moment as she aged from childhood to adult. They were not told as if regaling a tall tale to her children. The often private experiences of her life slipped from her lips as if she was living in the moment, a living catalog of 76 years. We saw the remarkable images of her life as she experienced them as a child riding her pony, of her marriage to our father, and of the losses she endured as a farm wife. Quite often she would stare yearningly at a corner of the room apparently at nothing to the human eye. This is how she spent her last Friday on this Earth

But on Saturday morning the priest told her to have a good day, and she responded with a small smile, a prolonged look into the priest's eyes and a confident "I will". She seemed to take the day to heart and talked meaningfully with all of her family

Later in the day when we told our mother of the Friday experience. She said she didn't remember it, but there was something that she just couldn't shake. Leaning in slightly she shared that on Friday night she had seen our Dad wearing his signature bib overalls standing at the foot of her bed gesturing for her to "come on". "It seemed so real," she said and would shake her head in disbelief.

Sunday was a day of surgery and overwhelming pain. She was,in fact, granted one more good day.

On Monday February 22, 1999 my mother passed away. My dad died six years earlier on Monday February 22, 1993. I imagine her final moments on Earth as she followed our dad as he gestured for her to come on. I see her taking his hand and strolling into a glorious orchard. They look back at their children one more time knowing they had left a final message that life and love goes on after death.

Learn more about this author, MJ Suttor.
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