This week at church our head pastor gave a sermon on prayer. He talked about how prayer can and does change things. As Christians, we believe that there is power in prayer. We can intercede on people’s behalf and pray for them. I have experienced the power of prayer in an extreme way in the last year, and certainly the last few months and weeks. The power of those prayers have changed me. Pastor Jacob said that our prayers are like ‘standing in the gap’ for others. I have used that very same phrase to describe how it has felt receiving the prayers and presence of my loved ones recently. I would love to begin to share some of my ‘stand in the gap’ moments.
It has been 7 weeks since my mom passed away. That number seems so small and yet so large. Just two weeks after my daughter, Eliza Hope, was born I got a call that my mother had suffered what they thought to be a stroke. A few days later, it was confirmed she would likely need assisted living moving forward. A day or two to follow, it was confirmed that the effects of the stroke had continued to worsen and she would not make it. My father and older sister let me and my other siblings know that we had about a week before she would pass. We all began to make arrangements to journey to say our goodbyes.
March 17. A date marked out in time forever. The day I found out my mother would pass. That morning, I woke up and I remember sleepily passing by my nightstand and realizing I had a dream she had died. I knew in my bones that call was coming.
March 20. Another date marked out in time. The day my mom went to be with Jesus. Surrounded by her husband and four children, just an hour after I arrived…she waited till we had all made it by her side, and then after her youngest said goodnight and left…as the rest of us shared memories of growing up and singing and humming ‘His Eye is on the Sparrow’ and ‘Hymn of Promise’….she slipped away to be with Jesus. I was the last to leave the room…I was also the last to arrive, so I’m sure I just needed a little more time. I wanted to memorize her. Take in all of who she was. Slowly breathe in the complicated nature of our relationship the last 7 years as her health had declined. Slowly breathe in the beautiful best friend she had been to me my whole life. Slowly breathe in the ways we argued and the ways we made each other laugh. Slowly breathe in the things that made my eyes roll…and the things that made her infuriated. The things within me that were exactly like her and the ways I had grown into my own person. The things that made us both immeasurably proud of each other. Those things are eternal. Like her spirit, they are always with me. Once experienced and lived out, each moment of our life exists around us, it stays within the universe forever. I sat there with her a little longer because I needed to soak in our relationship here on Earth one last time and acknowledge that I would now say, ‘hello’, to a new relationship with her in life beyond death. I spoke the 23rd Psalm over her body and left the room. I’d now stepped through an experience we are all assured…our parents will eventually pass.
March 27. A third date marked out in time. The day we celebrated my mom’s life and buried her remains. Many years before, on my first day of college I called my mom to tell her that I had just gotten sick and wasn’t sure I could go to my first class. As my mom listened she assured me that I could go to class I said, “But, mom, did you not hear me? I just threw up!” Her reply, “Yes, Regina Gail, I did hear you and you can go to class. You do this every time you’re afraid of something new. Every new school. Every big event. You get sick.” I was taken aback because even I had never noticed this within myself. My mother had. March 27th was no different. I woke up unsure I could even get in the car to make it to the church. I knew I would get sick. And then I heard, “Yes, Regina Gail. You do this every time you’re afraid of something new. Don’t be afraid.”
As we stepped through the funeral and burial there is so much I could reflect on. That my husband’s family had all driven across the southeast to stand in the gap for me and say, ‘we’ve got you.’ That four of my dearest friends did the sameThat my mother in law had been Jesus in living form to me through the entire process of her passing. Each time I turned around, I saw one of my people calmly standing as if to say, “We’ve got you. We’re standing in the gap.” My teeny tiny four week old Eliza, slept most of the day. Toward the end of the visitation I tried to wake her to feed her before the service began. Right as I sat down and the funeral service began, she woke up and immediately spit up everywhere. (Life is never a picture of perfection.) As Jeff began to walk out with her, my dear friend Brittany scooped her up returning Jeff to his seat. She was standing in the gap.
As we drove up to the burial site, I knew Eliza would wake again to feed at some point, so I wore my nursing cover to the plot and sat down. And, just as I suspected, as my mom was buried, Eliza awoke to eat. I wasn’t upset or flustered, just calmly began to nurse and rock her. As I sat there holding and feeding this brand new life, I watched as the one who did the very same for me was laid to rest. I watched as several of her grand babies, including my oldest daughter, laid flowers in the ground with her. My mind was so quiet and simultaneously noisy and full that when the pastor told us that the service was complete, I did not know what to do. I sat there for what felt like hours, but was only minutes. As I stood up, I figured everyone was gone, but as I turned around...off at a distance were my four friends...standing in the gap. They asked if I needed more time and took Eliza so I could have a moment alone.
I sat back down next to my little brother, while my oldest sister and niece sat behind us. My little brother turned on a piece of instrumental music that was playing as she passed away. I closed my eyes and silently began to cry trying to take in that this was real and once I got up the moment was passed. You only bury your parent once.
Just after turning 35, holding my 4 week old baby, I had just buried my mom. I wanted so badly for someone to say, ‘I know how you feel. I’ve been there. Here is what you do now.’ But, who has been here? Still in the healing of labor, feeling depleted and drained from lack of sleep and now, high on the adrenaline of loosing the one who gave you life. I needed to make peace with this moment being real...I needed to make peace with this moment passing. When I opened my eyes I looked to the right of my mom’s grave and saw the next plot over. “Regina ‘Jimmie’ Crouch.” My grandmother who I was named after. It struck me. There was one woman who knew exactly how I felt. I wasn’t sure how I hadn’t connected the dots until now. My mother. At 36, holding me, her 6 week old, buried her mother in this exact same spot. She knew every bit of what I had been feeling. Her feet had stood on this ground. Her tears were soaked up in the ground beneath me. And I have never felt more seen by her in my entire life.
She never told me what that felt like. And I never asked. What did it feel like to be so young, and newly postpartum and grieve your mother? All she ever recalled were the facts. She had a dream the night before she found she had passed. She was 36. I was six weeks old. And she flew on a plane to celebrate the life of her mother. She would often say I was her joy amidst a sad time. And that was it, it always seemed a sweet, simple statement. Now I know the depths of it. I don’t know if the events of the day for her looked like what mine did. But what I do know is that there is a piece of Earth in Hollywood, SC where we have both stood, straddling very strangely between new life and new death and we have both shed tears. My mother stood in the gap for me the day of her funeral. And in the loneliest moments of my grief to follow, I continue to hear her voice say, “Don’t be afraid, Regina Gail. You can move through this. I’ve been there too.”
