My gaze focused instead on my mother, undergoing her own metamorphosis at the end of her Alzheimer's journey. In the prior week, she had stopped eating and drinking, stopped opening her eyes or responding to us. Every visit could be my last.
Watching her shoulders and sternum labor to pull air into her lungs, prayer words fled. In their absence, I clung to the old hymns we both loved. The nurse had told us that hearing was the last sense we lose, so I sang to Mom of the old rugged cross and amazing grace. I reminded her Jesus loves her and how sweet it is to trust in Him.
When voice failed, I tended Mom's dry skin, matted eyes, and crusty lips. Going to wash my hands, I saw her: a female monarch imago, wings still wet, wrinkled, and limp, feet clinging to the translucent shards of empty chrysalis.
Three times my husband and I have served as monarch midwives: the final two months of his father's life; the summer of his mother's passing; and this spring, the final six weeks of my mother's life. We only succeeded in saving one caterpillar from April predators. Once it had pupated and hardened into a chrysalis, we took the almost-not-yet butterfly in its cleaned habitat to my parents in hope that my father would behold the beautiful miracle of transformation in the midst of his great loss.
Then royalty emerged sight unseen while he was walking and my back was turned. We nonetheless marveled at her wings, which she now slowly opened and closed, drying them and stretching like an athlete warming up.
Mom's ragged, strained breathing and rapid pulse calmed enough that Dad sent me home so he could be alone with Mom until my sisters' afternoon visits.
Soon her struggle resumed. Dad summoned the nurse and the rest of us daughters. We sat close and held her hands, shoulder, foot— anything we could reach—as to a life preserver until the nurse came.
Nurse E made non-committal hmms as she took vitals and listened to Mom's heart, abdomen, and lungs. We helped clean her and salve her pressure sores in the tender awareness we might be preparing her body for those who would prepare her for burial.
Then the nurse told us it was hard to say how long remained. Mom could continue days like this, in this liminal struggle.
"It is a mystery. You are people of faith. It is in God's hands. We need to trust Him. It will happen in His time. Keep talking to her. She can hear you."
Hearts breaking with Mom's obvious suffering, we thanked her, told her we loved her, told her it would be ok (would it?), told her she could go Home to Jesus, told her it would be just a little while and she could rest.
Then, a miracle came: Mom opened her eyes. She gazed straight into Daddy's eyes, not through or past him at the visions and hallucinations of many weeks. She saw him and he her.
We gasped.
Seizing the moment as she held his gaze, Dad called her by her name and told her he loved her. He said she was his best friend, the love of his life, a wonderful wife and mother. He said that he was so thankful for all the adventures they'd had, that he'd miss her terribly, that he'd see her again soon.
He told her that fifty-five years ago her daddy had walked her down the aisle and given her to him, and now he was walking her down the aisle to give her to Jesus.
Even the nurse wept.
We sat in silence in the sacred moment until, praying through the taut suspense, I told the smart speaker to play the album Evensong by Keith and Kristyn Getty.
Their music had provided the songs of my mother's life's evening. We watched their Family Hymn Sings from the early pandemic hundreds of times. Mom delighted in seeing their young daughters on the screen. Their hymns played in the car and at home.
When Kristyn began to sing, "I heard the voice of Jesus say, 'Come unto Me and rest,'" I exhaled the breath I didn't know I was holding. Her lyric Celtic soprano voice enveloped us in comfort and anchored us to the presence of Christ. Encircling our beloved mother and wife letting our hands on her frail limbs, we waited and wept, speaking softly to her when words arose. Her eyes fluttered closed again.
When the track changed to "Softly and Tenderly," we gradually joined the song, inviting Mom to her Home in Jesus. For months, she had spoken daily of going Home, needing to see her long-deceased parents, being on a journey. She was so near, almost at the threshold. We sang to tell her it was all right. It would be all right. She could go Home.
Youngest sister laughed through tears at the marvel that our reticent dad was singing too.
Mom's anguish slowly calmed, her breathing regulated. We waited and watched, uncertain, until the nurse said the crisis had passed for now and she could leave. She instructed Dad on care for the night ahead and assured us she would check in as soon as she possibly could in the morning.
Since Mom could linger days yet in these labor pains of struggle, Dad sent us girls home for the evening. My husband had arrived to pay his respects to Mom and inspect the butterfly. Under his guidance, Dad released the butterfly into the garden, her wings dry and body ready to drink deeply of spring's nectar. She fluttered to a shrub and soon soared out of sight, her transformation complete.
I kissed my mother and told her I'd see her soon.
That night I slept barefoot but fully clothed. The expected, dreaded call came in the 3 o'clock hour. My mother's beautiful spirit, itself reflecting the imago Dei, had taken flight. Her threadbare tent, translucent chrysalis of flesh, had served its present purpose. She was Home with Jesus awaiting the resurrection of her body also.
Our earthly home is less homely without her, but we will see her soon, when Jesus softly and tenderly calls each of us Home too, whether in death or at His soon appearing, when our mortal flesh is clothed with immortality and death is swallowed up in victory.
Come soon, Lord Jesus.
Christina R. Leone Moore, August 2024
