Two Beautiful Easter Deaths

It is Maundy Thursday and my wife and I just came in from the patio where we washed each other’s feet. This is the sort of lovely thing that happens when one is married to Cheryl Bias. While out there I was reminded of two beautiful Easter-week deaths. May I tell you about them, please?

One was the death of my mother-in-law, Cheryl’s mother, Dorothy Berry (or “Mrs. B.” to me), who died on Holy Saturday, 2002. But first let me tell you about another DB.

We used to go to a downtown church that, to attend it, we passed maybe 10 other Methodist churches. But it was home, and we loved it. Once, in the mid-90s, it somehow fell to us to pick up this old guy from a nursing home near our house and drive him with us to church every Sunday morning, so he could attend the old men’s Sunday school class of which he had been a member for several decades. As I recall he went by “DB.”

Well, our two boys (maybe elementary-school and middle-school age) weren’t particularly thrilled with the new plan – it meant we had to be ready to go a little bit earlier, and sometimes DB peed in the minivan. But what the heck. It was a good deed. Plus he was an interesting old guy, walked like a question mark, would crush your hand with a handshake, and as a baby had come to the Waco, TX, area in a covered wagon.

Well, as always, this one Easter Sunday we picked up DB and trundled down to church. DB headed off to his class. We got the boys settled into their Sunday school classes. And Cheryl and I went to our class of mostly married folk, mostly people in their 40s, mostly people we loved (and love). The senior pastor of this church was a “high-church” kinda guy. Over the years he had encouraged and armed us all to embrace Lent a bit more seriously than most United Methodists might, and Cheryl and I (et al.) had gotten into it. Self denial. Lenten study groups. It all made the whole “Lord is risen” bit of Easter morning seem so much better earned.

This particular Easter I found myself saying aloud in class, “I almost feel like I don’t deserve to be here today. I didn’t make it to the Maundy Thursday service or the Good Friday service this year. It’s like I shouldn’t get to have the joy of an Easter morning.”

OK, whatever, Randolph. Other people talked about this or that. And then, about five minutes after my odd confession, the church’s business manager knocks on the door, opens it, crooks his finger at me and says, “Randolph, I need to speak to you.”

“See,” I said, “they’re not gonna let me stay!”

Well, as it turns out I was not being expelled. Rather, DB had died, and as I was the one who had driven him to church the coroner wanted to talk to me, in the main church office, with DB’s body lying there on the floor with a sheet draped over him. Had I seen anything odd? Was there any reason to suspect anything different about this morning from any other Sunday morning? No. No. And I was allowed to go back to Sunday school, and stay for the Easter service.

I later learned that DB had given the prayer in his old men’s Sunday school class that day. DB, age 100, stood up that Easter morning, said the prayer, told all his classmates that he loved them, then sat down and died. Where does one sign up for that gig?

On the drive home, now a foursome rather than a fivesome, Travis our middle-schooler noted that DB had not had his hat on that day. DB always wore a fedora. I didn’t think the coroner would care about that data point.

Move ahead a decade. Cheryl’s dear mother was struggling amidst her third bout with cancer. Cheryl received the call from her sister and brother-in-law that maybe she should fly the thousand miles to be with them all sooner rather than later. The next day she did.

Well, Mrs. B., as was her style, hung in there. One week passed. Then another week. And I was getting tired of the “Mr. Mom” routine. OK, the boys were in college and high school, so it’s not like I was changing diapers. But . . . I missed my wife.

Easter week approached and it was decided that the boys and I would fly out to Jacksonville on Good Friday. I was eager to see my wife, but I was daunted by the prospect of the somber scene at Cheryl’s sister’s house, plus . . . I KNEW what was going to happen. We three men would fly there, have our visit, fly home, and Cheryl’s mom would likely die while we were on the plane home, so we’d have to just turn around and fly back. Because, you know, it is all about me.

So we fly into Jacksonville that Friday night. We all gather ‘round Memommy’s bed, and think our own thoughts, say our own prayers, cry our own tears, say whatever it is we each wish to say to her, alone or in small groups. It was just as somber as I anticipated, but it was oh so appropriate.

With the basically comatose Memommy in her bed, we all stay up a while, catching up.

Early that next morning, Holy Saturday, we receive a knock at our bedroom door from the hospice nurse who has been engaged to help Cheryl and her sister care for their mother. “I think you should come down here now.”

Two hours later here was the scene. Dorothy, aka Dot, aka Mom, aka Mrs. B., aka Memommy, was lying on her back in her single bed. This glorious woman who had fought cancer for a decade, who had been widowed in her mid-40s, who had graced her whole family, and hundreds of others, with a selfless love, was about to be through fighting. Gathered around this bed were her two daughters, her two sons-in-law, her four grandsons, one close family friend, and her beloved pastor. Amidst the sounds of Memommy’s belabored breathing, the minister offered a lovely prayer. After the shared “amen,” Memommy took exactly one more breath and died. Hers was truly a beautiful death.

The funeral was that Monday. The boys flew back to their schooling and Cheryl and I stayed on a little longer before we flew home. As it turns out, I didn’t need to fly back to Jacksonville after all.
 

^{Photo by Jonathan Larson on Unsplash}