Death and the Gospel
My mother passed away a little over a month ago. It wasn't surprising, as she'd been suffering with mind-altering levels of pain due to an inexplicable infection on her legs for over two years, but it still feels a bit... abrupt. We didn't want her to die, but at the same time, her suffering was so great and our helplessness to alleviate her condition so very limited that it was something of a blessing for her to be freed from her physical body. Even if she'd fought to linger with us longer, her quality of life would have been so low that she would have been even more miserable than she was, which honestly shouldn't be possible. The hard thing is that now that her pain-altered, rather argumentative persona is no longer overshadowing our existence, I'm able to remember all the wonderful things about her. How good of a listener she was in the Before. How giving of a mother and friend she was. We'd been watc...