Season of Blessing Read online

  How could Sylvia sing?

  Joseph had been like that, too. As he’d grown closer to death, he’d grown closer to his God, and what seemed like passing into the end had only been a beginning to him. It was that way for Sylvia, too. He couldn’t fathom how she could sing about cancer in her breast and bones and liver and lungs being worth it all…It was something he couldn’t get planted in his mind.

  But the truth of it was growing clearer every day. If there was ever a time in life when spiritual things were clear and the mind and heart were at their peak, he supposed it was when a person was about to die. He wondered how he would face it. He knew there wouldn’t be a song in his heart. There would probably be anger and bitterness, helplessness and despair.

  Unfamiliar tears trailed down his face, and he looked from side to side, then quickly wiped them away before anyone could see.

  Then drawing in a deep breath, he made himself go into the room.

  Brenda stood beside the bed, speaking to Sylvia in a soft voice. “Harry was your knight in shining armor,” she said. “When you were so sick, you should have seen him spring into action. We were all there, trying to help him…”

  Sylvia saw David entering the room. “Oh, David,” she whispered, and reached out for his hand. “What a joy to see you!”

  Again he found that it was too hard for him to speak, so he only held her hand with both of his and tried to smile.

  She looked tiny in the hospital bed, with an oxygen mask that should have been over her mouth but now hung under her chin, an IV running out of her arm, and wires and monitors running from her body to machines around her bed.

  He couldn’t escape the certainty that Sylvia was dying, and there was nothing that medicine or technology could do about it.

  For the second time in his life he wished he believed in prayer.

  CHAPTER

  Seventy-Three

  The decision to stop the chemotherapy and put Sylvia into hospice care was the hardest one of Harry’s life, but her body was too weak to accept the ravages of any further chemo, and her pain was too great. After many meetings with the doctors, he agreed to shift their focus from healing to comforting her and keeping her free from pain.

  They set her up in a hospital bed in their bedroom, and a hospice nurse came to set up the equipment they would need to keep Sylvia as comfortable as possible.

  Sarah and Jeff dropped everything and came to be with her. To Sylvia’s chagrin, Sarah left the baby with Gary and showed up alone, looking like a porcelain doll with a dozen cracks just beneath the surface, waiting to shatter if it was jarred.

  When Sylvia fell asleep, Harry took the kids into the kitchen and sat across from them. Jeff looked like a lost little boy, struggling to hold back his tears, and Sarah couldn’t look at him.

  “Sit down, sweetie,” he told her as she gazed out the window toward the barn.

  “I’m okay standing,” she said.

  He sighed. “I need to talk to you, honey. I need for you to look at me.”

  Slowly, she turned back around. Her face twisted with pain, and she covered her mouth. “Oh, Daddy, don’t say it.”

  He forced himself to go on. “I have to. Your mother is going to die.”

  Sarah shook her head. “No, Dad! You’re giving up! There are still things you can do! You can’t just give in to this and let it have her!”

  “I’m not giving up,” Harry said softly. “I’ve just had to come to terms with it. She’s going to die. She’s suffering, and it’s hard to keep her free from pain. It won’t do me any good to lie to you and give you false hope. We need to prepare ourselves.”

  Jeff got up now, his hands hanging in fists at his sides. “How could he do this to her?” he asked. “How could God refuse to heal her after all she’s done for him?”

  Harry closed his eyes and swallowed back the tightness in his throat. “He will heal her, son.” The words came hard, but he managed to get them out. “He’s going to heal her in his way. Maybe even the best way. When she dies, she’ll be with him and she’ll be healthy and sound again.”

  “That’s not healing!” Sarah said. “That’s not what we prayed for. God knows what we’re asking. He promised that if we delighted ourselves in him that he would give us the desires of our heart. Well, my desire is for her to live!”

  Jeff turned his sister around and pulled her against him, and they held each other as they wept. Harry stepped around the table and put his arms around both of them. “She will live,” he whispered. “Just not here, with us.”

  He knew it wasn’t enough for them, not yet. They wept harder than he’d ever seen them weep before, and he wept with them, holding them and hugging them and reassuring them as the reality of their mother’s life and death seeped into their spirits.

  When Harry returned to her bed, he saw how still and lifeless she lay. The morphine had knocked out her pain, but in her drug-induced state, he wondered if she would be able to sit up and have a conversation. Would she be able to pray? Would she sing again?

  The morphine didn’t last long, and each time it wore off, he heard the groaning in her throat and saw the pain on her face. He squeezed her pump, issuing more drugs into her blood-stream, knocking her out again until the medicine wore off and she gritted her teeth in pain…

  That night, as he lay in the bed he used to sleep in with her, he watched the sporadic, labored pattern of her breathing in the hospital bed, and wondered if she’d make it through the night.

  He lay there, exhausted from the struggle to keep her drugged before the pain took hold, and realized that he’d come to the absolute end of his hope. It was time to start praying according to God’s will, and according to Sylvia’s needs.

  “I can’t stand her suffering, Lord,” he whispered into the darkness. “Go on and take her. It’s okay with me. Just don’t let this suffering go on.”

  Sleep didn’t come for him that night. He just lay there near her, listening for every breath, every groan, every beep of every monitor, while the children slept in their childhood rooms.

  He had never felt more alone.

  CHAPTER

  Seventy-Four

  For the sake of the children, Harry convinced the doctor to pull back on Sylvia’s morphine, just long enough to get her coherent to give closure to the children. She would want it that way, he was sure. He could just hear her spirit sitting up in bed and shaking her finger at him. Harry, don’t you keep me so drugged that I can’t say good-bye.

  The pain soaked her in sweat and made her body tremble, but she tried to smile as Sarah and Jeff came to her bedside.

  They sat on either side of her, each holding one of her hands. Sarah leaned in, and pressed her forehead against Sylvia’s face. “Mama, don’t go,” she whispered. “Please don’t go. I need you. I don’t know how to be a mother without you.”

  Sylvia let go of Jeff’s hand and stroked Sarah’s hair. “Yes, you do, sweetheart. You’re doing a great job.”

  “But that’s because I can pick up the phone and call you. You can walk me through it.”

  “But you have everything you need,” Sylvia whispered. She swallowed with great effort. Even her throat had begun to feel cancer ravaged. “I’ve taught you everything I know. And you’ll still have your dad. And Gary is so precious. I have perfect peace about leaving you with him. He’ll take care of you. He’ll help you through this.” She turned Sarah’s face up to hers, and made her look into it. She remembered when Sarah had wept inconsolably over a boyfriend who had broken her heart. She must have been sixteen then, Sylvia thought. Her face had looked like this, and Sylvia had wanted so much to be able to dry her tears and say the words that could heal her heart. But there hadn’t been words then, and there weren’t any now.

  “Sweetheart, you’re going to raise a houseful of godly children who serve the Lord and bear bushels and barrels of fruit. And when they ask about their grandmother, you’re going to show them pictures of me and tell them that I’m in heaven, waiting f
or all of you to come and join me. Home, where we all belong.”

  Sarah’s weeping broke her heart, but Sylvia didn’t have the energy to cry her own tears. She looked at her son. His face was red and wet. She hadn’t seen him cry since he was ten years old. She wished he had a wife now, one who could help him through this time, comfort him and cry with him. But he looked so alone.

  She touched his face with her cold, trembling hand. “Jeff…my sweet Jeff…you’ll be okay, too.”

  He could hardly speak. “I know, Mama.”

  “I’ve prayed so hard for you. God’s going to send you a wonderful, godly woman someday, and you’ll be a precious husband to her. You’ll be just like your father. And when you have children, they’ll be the most blessed children in the world. There will be generations of blessings for your family. I know that without a doubt, because I’ve prayed it since you were born.”

  A pain shot through her side, and she sucked in a breath, then started to cough. Sarah got up and tried to help her, but she turned on her side and kept trying to clear her lungs.

  Jeff put the oxygen mask back on her face, and she was able to get some air into her lungs. She lay on her back, her eyes squeezed shut, as the nerves in her back seemed to break into attack mode, shooting bullets of pain through her body.

  One of the children went to get Harry, and he came into the room. She saw him grabbing the morphine pump, squeezing it. She would slip into oblivion soon, she thought on a wave of panic. She hadn’t finished saying good-bye.

  When he leaned over her to kiss her, she grabbed his shirt. “Harry,” she whispered. “I want you to get me the tape recorder.”

  “Why?” he asked. “What do you want to tape?”

  She didn’t have the energy to explain it to him. “Please. I’ll rest for a minute, but don’t pump the morphine again. Let it wear off so I can talk. Then bring me the tape player. I have some things to say to the people I love.”

  Harry straightened, and she saw the pain pulling at his face. As painful as her decline had been, she knew that he suffered even more.

  “I want it to be played at my funeral,” she whispered.

  He looked so helpless. “Sylvia, I don’t want you expending energy on that.”

  The morphine was taking hold, pulling her under, dulling the pain, but also dulling her senses. “Honey…” She knew her speech was slurred. “I have no intention of letting my death be the end of my fruit-bearing. The Lord has been too good to me not to do this last thing for him. I want to minister in my death, just as I’ve ministered in my life. I want my death to glorify Jesus. And I want to say good-bye.”

  She touched his face, felt the tired stubble. “Please, Harry. I have to do this.”

  He sighed, the heaviest, saddest sigh she’d ever heard in all her life. “I’ll get the tape player.”

  When the morphine wore off, and the pain sank its teeth into her again, Harry sat her up, tried to make her comfortable, and pinned the microphone onto her gown. Then he turned the tape recorder on and left her alone to say her final good-bye to the people she was leaving behind.

  CHAPTER

  Seventy-Five

  With each day that passed Sylvia declined further, until finally those who loved her began to pray her home. No matter how much morphine they gave her, it wasn’t enough. She flailed and jerked and trembled in bed. Days had passed since she’d been able to speak or look anyone in the eye.

  In many ways, she was already gone.

  Harry didn’t want her to linger in this place between life and death for his sake…or the sake of the children. Instead, he wanted her to go where she could shed the pain like an old garment she wouldn’t need anymore.

  He prayed for the Lord to take her, night after night after night…

  But when the time finally came that the doctor warned him she wouldn’t make it through the night, he found that he wasn’t ready. It was a funny thing. Sarah and Jeff had suddenly developed the strength they needed to make it through their mother’s death…but he…

  He didn’t know if he could really let her go. The thought of her still being here in some form was preferable to having her disappear from the earth, no longer a part of his world.

  He didn’t dare pray for God to give her more time. That would be selfish. Instead he prayed for strength. He would need God’s arms around him, propping him up, moving his feet as he walked through these final hours. He could not do it on his own strength.

  He knew that the neighbors needed to see Sylvia one last time, and in some way, he felt that she would know they were there. Sarah called, and found them at Brenda’s house, praying on the front porch. David called them in to the kitchen and they sat around the telephone listening to her stopped-up voice.

  “They don’t expect Mama to make it through the night,” she said. “My dad said that it would be all right if you’d like to come over.”

  “We’ll be right there,” Brenda whispered.

  They were at the door in moments, and Harry could see that they’d shed as many tears tonight as he and the kids had done. They came silently into the house, hugged everyone quietly, then followed Harry into the bedroom.

  As they went in, Sylvia opened her eyes. Harry rushed to her bed. “Honey?”

  Her eyes looked glazed, distant, but then she focused on him.

  “Honey, the girls are here. Brenda, Tory, and Cathy came to say hello.”

  Sylvia felt as if she swam through Jell-O, fighting her way to the top where she could get air. She heard Harry’s voice…sniffing…the whisk of tissues pulled from their box…

  “…girls are here…came to say…”

  She had to talk to them, she thought. She had to see them one last time. Please, Lord, pull me up…one last time…

  And there they were, standing around her bed, Cathy on one side next to Harry, Brenda and Tory on the other. Sarah and Jeff stood at the foot of her bed. They looked like they hadn’t slept in days.

  She locked into Cathy’s eyes, then turned to Brenda and Tory. “Best times,” she whispered on a thin breath. “Tell me…best times…”

  They had always done it. It was their ritual after an ordeal. When Joseph survived his heart transplant, when Tory had given birth to her Down’s Syndrome baby, when Cathy got Mark safely home from jail. They had always run down the list of the very best moments…

  There were so many.

  In stark silence, the three women made herculean efforts to control their tears. She felt sorry for them, and wished she could touch them and impart some kind of peace.

  Finally, Cathy spoke up in a raspy voice. “Watching when you came home with my Annie,” she whispered, “and I saw how changed she was. That was a best moment.”

  Sylvia smiled. “Good one,” she managed to say.

  Brenda patted her hand and tried to put on that cheerful face that came so naturally to her. But it didn’t look natural when her face was covered with tears. “When we went trying on wigs,” she said.

  Sylvia breathed a laugh. “So silly.”

  “Yeah, we were silly,” Brenda said. “But it was definitely a best moment.”

  Tory squeezed her hand. “When little Bo accepted Christ.”

  She squeezed back. “Priceless.”

  “Yeah,” Cathy agreed. “The look on your face as you watched the video of him giving his life to Christ.”

  Sylvia closed her eyes and remembered.

  “The best moments weren’t just in the last year,” Cathy said. “They go back for several years. Remember when you realized you were supposed to go to the mission field, and surrendered to Harry’s call?”

  Sylvia opened her eyes, laughing weakly.

  “And the moment I met Steve,” Cathy said.

  That was a good one, Sylvia thought.

  “Barry,” she whispered.

  Tory nodded. “I was just thinking of that. When Barry came back home after we’d been separated. That was one of the best moments.”

  “And Joseph’
s heart.” Sylvia almost couldn’t get the words out. She hoped they heard.

  “Yes.” Brenda’s voice wobbled. “When he woke up from surgery with all that color in his cheeks.”

  “Good moments…, “ Sylvia whispered. “Best moments.”

  She started to cough, and they all gathered closer, as if their closeness could somehow help her clear her lungs. But it was no use. Harry put the mask back over her face, and she sank back into her pillow as the pain tightened its vice around her body.

  She sensed the grief overtaking them all, and she wished she was a better actor, that she could pretend to be relaxed, serene, and pain-free. She tried to lie still, tried not to jerk or moan, tried not to wince with the shooting pain.

  Then she felt the drugs sweeping over her, dulling the pain, relaxing her body, taking her out…

  But she wasn’t ready…not yet…she had to pray for them…they weren’t ready.…

  Lord, please…just another minute…

  Cathy thought she would collapse in grief, but somehow she managed to leave Sylvia’s bedside. Sarah was there to hug her, and she felt the young woman’s racking sobs as she held her. Brenda hugged Jeff, and Tory clung to Harry.

  “Don’t go.”

  Cathy turned and saw that Sylvia was awake again, reaching for them. Sarah and Jeff rushed for her, taking her hands, and Harry grabbed that pump again.

  “Want to pray for you,” she said on a shallow whisper. “Come…”

  One by one, they took each other’s hands, until they stood in a circle around Sylvia’s bed, tears flowing and noses running and hearts moaning…

  And then she spoke as clearly as if she’d never been sick. “Lord,” she said, “help them to see the joy in this…”

  Her words trailed off, and her eyes closed. Her raspy breathing settled and stilled…

  …and all grew quiet.

  The monitor beeped out a warning, and Harry fell over her, shaking her and touching her face, trying to make her open her eyes.