in the shadow of the end
After her final hospitalization, Olivia weakened. Her light began to fade.
I couldn’t sleep or eat—four days passed with barely any rest or nourishment. Life had become a waking nightmare. Even church felt like a grotesque performance, a cruel absurdity. How could others carry on with their ordinary lives while our daughter was dying, hour by hour?
A terrible tension hung over everyone in the family—but most of all, over Olivia—as we waited for the inevitable.
Our new pastor was judgmental in the pulpit and no less so in person: a hard man, and not someone we could trust on his best day, let alone during our worst. So we turned to the pastor of our former church—a dignified, compassionate man who listened without judgment as I shared our plans for Olivia’s death and memorial.
We asked him to eulogize her. After hearing what we hoped the service would be, he gently suggested something else.
“You combine a formidable intellect with a profound faith and eloquent speech,” he said. “You’ll do her justice.”
I was stunned. One of the most meaningful compliments I’ve ever received came during the worst days of my life, from someone I respected deeply. Yet even as I clung to his words, I could barely keep track of what I was supposed to be doing from hour to hour. Each long, hot summer day blurred into the next. My “formidable intellect,” I thought wryly, was no use to me now.
wedding
My dearest friend and daughter of my heart, Anna, was married that month. Even on this happiest of days, we all felt unnerved by Olivia’s ill health. Olivia barely ate or drank at the reception, and when asked how she was feeling, began to cry.
“What’s happening, honey?” I asked.
“I don’t feel good,” she replied, “and I’m afraid to die. Last night in bed I was afraid I might die if I went to sleep.”
Fighting back the urge to cry, too, I steadied myself for Olivia’s sake. “That must have been so scary,” I exclaimed. “What did you do?”
“I talked to God about it,” Olivia answered matter-of-factly.
I asked if she’d gotten an answer from him, and she replied, “Yes, he said to me ‘don’t be afraid, it’s going to be OK.’”
As people whirled by on the dance floor and Olivia toyed with her cake, we talked about dying. She wanted to know who would take care of her in heaven, and where she would live. I was stunned, for I’d never thought about such things from a child’s perspective. When I think of passing on, I expect to go on as an adult goes into any new adventure.
Not so with Olivia, who was still a child and had lived with and been cared for her whole life by loving parents. She saw herself as she was: a 12-year-old child, half grown and incapable of caring for herself. Where would she live? Who would prepare her meals, and tuck her into bed at night? Who would remind her to take her vitamins and drive her to school or appointments? Who would regard her with the love and pride of parents, and laugh as heartily at her jokes as we did?
The idea of telling her that Jesus, her great-grandmothers, and all of her ancestors would meet her as she entered heaven seemed meaningless. Only the idea of being met by one’s parents and the loved ones familiar to her would be adequate to help her make this transition. I had no sensible answers for her; suddenly I could see her problem. Still a concrete child, she wasn’t able to romanticize seeing Jesus or the angels or anyone else. She wanted her Mom and her Dad there with her, just as we had been as long as she could remember, holding her hand and helping her through the rough times. Who would go with her as she passed on? What could I say to help her?
As the realization of our different perspectives hit me, I considered my words carefully. I didn’t want to scare her, nor did I want to lie or romanticize anything. She expected the best and the truth from her mother, and I couldn’t let her down now.
“I’ll have to think about this, honey; you bring up some good points,”
I said thoughtfully. “I don’t have an answer for you right now. But let’s ask God to help, and to give you pictures of what you need to help you. I know He’ll do that for you.”
We prayed right then and asked God for help.
Satisfied for the moment, Olivia turned her attention to the start of the new school year. The first day was just three weeks away, and she and her friends were supposed to begin middle school—a big milestone.
“Do you think you’ll feel well enough to go to school?” I asked gently.
She sighed. “No. I don’t think I’ll make it that long.”
There we were, sitting at a beautiful wedding reception, talking about Olivia’s death over half-eaten cake. She had just told me that, within three weeks, she’d be gone.
Does a dying child know these things?
It was utterly surreal.
olivia’s dream
A few mornings later, Olivia greeted me with a radiant smile.
“Mom! Guess what?” she exclaimed. “I’m not afraid anymore! I had a dream—I saw what it’s going to be like over there, and I’m not afraid anymore!”
She described standing at the top of the world, on a mountain peak overlooking a beautiful landscape of rolling green hills, sparkling rivers, and gurgling brooks. Some of it was forested, some open; above it all stretched a clear, endless blue sky.
“I saw a town down below, so I started running,” she said.
“And Silvie [our dog] was with me. We ran down the mountain, and there were flowers along the way. I could run so fast, Mom! My feet never even touched the ground!”
Her eyes sparkled with joy. She had never walked a day in her life.
Tears sprang to my eyes.
I saw her running, too.
“We got to the town, and just outside, I saw Tara and Elizabeth [her best friends]—and Tara could walk, too! We all started running into town. We were normal, Mom, just like everyone else!”
“We saw a mall, and we went shopping. There were stores, and we went in and out of them, and we walked all around. We got ice cream cones. And when we came back outside, the world was still beautiful. It sounded twinkly and sparkly, like fairy bells ringing.”
She paused, beaming.
“And that was my dream.
And I’m not afraid anymore.”
Olivia’s friends, like her, all had special needs. Like Olivia, Tara used a wheelchair and had never walked; Elizabeth had Down’s Syndrome and until that day, Olivia hadn’t had much to say about being different from other children, nor had she ever made comparisons. She was happy in her own skin all the time and had a sense of humor far more sophisticated than her IQ tests suggested she should have had.
Once, when she asked if she could answer the front door after the doorbell rang, I joked, “Sure, just don’t run in the house.”
As she wheeled herself toward the door, she cocked an eyebrow in my direction and laughed, “Yeah, I might break a leg, and then I couldn’t walk!”
my promise
And so, my daughter’s prayers were answered. Out of the depths where dreams are born, she dreamed a vision of beauty, wholeness, and friendship. We learned that where she was going, there are malls and best friends, dogs that run beside you, and people who float like hovercraft. There is laughter. There is ice cream.
She needed no white-robed Jesus to greet her—no theology, no doctrine to guide her crossing from this life to the next. She had already been given everything she needed.
She was fine.
“But, Mom, one more thing,” she added, after we had sat companionably for awhile.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I want you to stay with me the whole time, OK?”
“The whole time you’re sick?”
“Yes, the whole time. I want you to stay with me and not leave me, OK?”
“OK, I’ll stay with you and not leave you. I’ll go with you as far as I can go, OK?”
“OK. Promise?”
“Yes, I promise. But just one more thing, Olivia.”
“What?”
“What if I have to go pee?” And we laughed.
a song in the night
Later on, I felt I might have a panic attack, thinking about the promise I had made. I had no idea what I was promising, how long this process would be, how many days or weeks. I didn’t know how I would be able to manage my other children, or deal with anything that would happen outside Olivia’s room, the room she would die in.
I had promised what any mother or father would promise, which was to mother her until the very end, to finish the race I had to run as a mother, regardless of the obstacles or cost. Though I doubted my own ability to hold up emotionally and mentally, I intended to go all the way with her. I feared with as much fear as a body can hold that I’d let my daughter down by not being able to hold up under my own terror and pain, that somehow I’d drown in them.
Psalm 42 was a comfort to me:
Deep calls to deep at the sound of Thy waterfalls;
Psalm 42:7, New American Standard Bible
All Thy breakers and Thy waves have rolled over me.
The LORD will command His lovingkindness in the daytime;
And His song will be with me in the night,
A prayer to the God of my life.
Until that time, I had never felt totally overwhelmed in any circumstance, except possibly during a few phases of childbirth, where the outcome is expected to be a happy one–and always was for me. This labor of the heart was one ending in terrific loss for us, and a leap into an unknown world for our daughter. This was the darkest of all nights we could have imagined before then.
And the Lord’s song was there with us in the night, a prayer to the God of our life.
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