US Mennonite Brethren

A daughter’s reflections on the last Christmas with her mother

Dear Mom,

It’s been years since we spent our last Christmas together before you died. Everyone converged at my sister Jane’s to celebrate Christmas Eve 1994 in the way that had been our ritual for decades. The table was laden with hamburgers and french fries.

That tradition, as strange at it was, had been set years before when the three oldest of your five children were small. You told me why: Manson (Iowa) Mennonite Church always held a Christmas Eve service, and you wanted to prepare something “easy” for the children in order to make it to the service on time. The tradition stuck through the years, even when your five children grew up and moved away from home. I know you smile in heaven when you see how no matter where anyone is spending Christmas Eve, the hosting family always sets the table with the simple, ritual fare. Following supper, we share gifts and attend a candlelight service.

Deep down inside I knew you were dying—we all did. But there is something about celebrating Christmas Eve with the mother who birthed you that throws a veil of denial over the obvious. It was too jarring to let the dark shadow of your ebbing life cast a pall over what was already a more subdued celebration than usual.

Mom, I know now, many years later, that my heaviness came from sensing the shortness not only of your breath due to your failing heart but of the shortness of your days left on earth. The first sign came when I saw you pick at your plate of hamburger and fries, unable to eat. Even so, you tried your hardest to smile at your children, their spouses and your grandchildren.

You saved some of your most special smiles that night for Jordan Lee, the baby of my nephew, Seth, and his then-wife Dena. The baby was decked out in her Christmas finery, ready to eat her meal at her mother’s breast. She was the last great-grandchild you held. You seemed to know that out of all of us around the table, she and you were closest to God. She had just come into the world, and you soon would leave it.

Then, there was the way your face looked in the glow of the small fire of your candle as the congregation sang Silent Night. The lines on your face looked deeper, sadder. And the gaze of your eyes turned inward to a place where only you could go. As I looked down the aisle at you standing by Dad, your husband of 53 years, I wanted to stumble over family members between us and grab you and never let you go. I wanted you to take me to that place inside your soul that experienced Christ’s coming into the world differently because of your impending exit. But fear held me in its grip, as I remained glued to my spot.

Finally, there was the time in front of Jane’s fire the night before I flew back to New York City where I’d lived for the last eight years. As had been our well-worn path since I had moved to that city without your blessing, you asked me yet again when I would “come home.” I had hardened myself against this inevitable question with my usual answer, “I’m not sure—but God will let me know when the time is right.”

As the words came bumbling out with guilt, they tasted like metal of a heavy chain wrapping itself around my heart. I moved to New York because there was unresolved misunderstanding and conflict between us, compounded by lots of self-chosen sin and unresolved emotional and spiritual wounds in my life. I fled home, family and church, hoping to outrun myself and all the pain inside. But it didn’t work.

During my sojourn in the city, I reconnected with God as a prodigal daughter who wanted no longer to eat pig’s food. But there were still many miles between us. I had come home to my Heavenly Father in repentance for my sins. Yet you, my earthly mother, still waited at the window of your failing heart. You never ceased to watch for the first sign of me on that road coming back towards you so we could mend our broken relationship.

In the dancing shadows of the firelight against your weary face, I again felt compelled to rush into your arms and to hold you and be held by you. But the heavy cloak of denial—made heavier by my pride—held me in my seat on the sofa across from you. To sing out my sadness, I picked up the guitar and sang an old family favorite. The words bounced off the dark walls in lonely echoes, as I sang alone. You sat silent, behind the emotional miles you had tried unsuccessfully to bridge one more time.

Mom, you didn’t feel well enough to come with me to the airport, and I flew back to the city. Two months later, I boarded another plane bound for Arizona and the hospital where you were dying. You had told Dad you wanted all of us to be together with you in the intensive care unit. All five of us kids made it in time to say goodbye.

My brothers, Neil and Brian, had to go back to work before you passed. But my older sisters, Jane and Paula, and I stayed until the end. On a Sunday a couple of days before you died, Dad, you and I had devotions together at your bedside. It was one of the last times you had a conversation with us before you fell into a coma. In that time, you bequeathed your mother’s ring and wedding ring to me as a symbol of your forgiveness and desire to complete the long journey that had kept us apart.

As morning sun bounced off the rings, the tiny bright flash reminded me of the last Silent Night, and the tiny fire that flickered in your hands at church. That fire will forever burn in my heart, reminding of the tenacity of your loyalty. The flames of your last act of restoration reduced my bricks of pride to the soft ashes of a pain remembered forever but healed always. Your faithful love transformed the memories of our last common Christmas Eve meal into a royal banquet of belonging to God and to each other.

Your ever-grateful daughter,

Laurie

Laurie Oswald Robinson writes this letter to her mother, the late Dorothy Mae Egli Oswald, who died Feb. 15, 1995. Robinson is the youngest of five siblings, born to Dorothy and Paul Oswald, 89, who still lives in Manson, Iowa, where the children were raised. Robinson is a freelance writer from Newton, Kan., where she lives with her husband, Alfonso, and their foster daughter.