I think my mother is dying.
Lastweek, she had a “catastrophic hemorrhagic stroke”, which means that the right half of her brain basically exploded. Her doctor tells me it probably wouldn't have happened if she had only taken her medicine, but her pill bottles are lined up on her counter, untouched in spite of my reminders.
From what I've read, most people don't survive long afterward, and my mother is 90 years old. She's tough of course, and God is able to do what doctors can't, but I feel like her time on earth is winding down.
It is her second stroke in three years, the first one obviously not as severe, since she was able to return home and live on her own after only two months of therapy at a rehab center. She signed herself out against the advice of all the doctors and therapists and proved to them all that she could do it.
I tried living with her for three weeks after she returned home, and she told me repeatedly to leave, that she didn't need me, didn't need my love or my help. My mother is fiercely independent and resented me because she needed my help with yard work and shopping and cleaning. During my stay there, I slept on the living room floor in her three bedroom house because that's the only place she trusted me. She repeatedly accused me of wanting to take her house and her money.
The ordeal was too difficult for both of us, so I finally went back home and ordered her a “LifeAlert” call button so that she could just push the button for help if she fell. She never wore it.
And she never accepted the “Home Health Care” that Medicare offered,the help with bathing and the physical therapy at home, etc. So, since I am her only child and the only person she has not succeeded in alienating by her hostility, she was forced to accept my help.
For the last two and a half years, I checked on her every day and helped when she let me, but it was a constant battle to get her to allow me to lift something for her, or scrub her bathtub for her. I've been told her attitude was because of her age, or because of her stroke, but I know better; she's been proud and suspicious and bitter as long as I've known her.
And yet, I love her dearly, and it is heartbreaking now to see that this second stroke has left her completely helpless, at the mercy of strangers who are sometimes none too gentle with “the patient in524.” Of course, there are many patient, loving people on the hospital staff as well, and I thank God for them.
My mother has moments of lucidity, and I can see a smile in her eyes even if her lips can't form one. But more and more often, she sees dogs in the hospital room, or rain clouds in the corner. Mostly, she believes she has fallen and is lying in the backyard, calling for help from her deceased neighbor. I've tried to enter her world and tell her that her neighbor can't come, but that she should call on Jesus, because He is the only One who can take her home.
You see, my mother is not saved. Over thirty years of prayers for her salvation, gentle nudges and blatant invitations from me, plus witnessing from other people God has placed in her life over the years, and yet she has resisted, too proud to admit she needs aSavior.
During one of her confused states yesterday, she turned to me and said, “I'msorry, I'm sorry.” I'd never heard those words from her, and I don't even know if she was really talking to me or what she was apologizing for. But in case I don't get another chance, I said, “I forgive you, Mama. I forgive you for everything. I love you,” and through God's grace, I meant it. I wasn't sure I had forgiven her until that moment.
Still, the One she truly needs forgiveness from is God, and as she becomes less and less responsive to reality, I dread more and more the possibility that she could die without knowing Christ. I consolemyself with the fact that God loves her more than I do, and that He wants her saved more than I do. He's given her so many opportunities, maybe He'll give her one more.
Maybe that's all she needs.
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness,but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9
