What Does Heaven Look Like?

I left her smiling in August and headed out to Providence crying at the airport, because that’s just what I do. But I had a heart so full of hope it weighed me down. For as long as it could, that hope lived heavily in my ignorance and optimism.

In that short two hour flight, I was able to remove myself from her sleepless nights, her tight hugs that always backed away in tears, the pain she felt when she forced out a smile for us, her hunger for all the food she didn’t allow herself to eat. I physically escaped the depletion of my own mother’s life. Sometimes, I tried to ignore the fact that she was stuck handling that inescapable truth back home. I wishfully believed that I’d come home to Thanksgiving cooking, Christmas morning magic, and all her beauty on the regular days.

It was sudden at the end. Just weeks before I got the call, she was calling the Christmas light guy, talking to me about boys, paying bills. But I got that phone call and flew back home the next day out of TFG on the 3:05 from Providence to Baltimore, ultimately arriving at Midway that evening. I sat window seat as tears fell freely onto the face mask that I grossly used dually as a Kleenex. I watched the rain fall out of my window and related. Thousands of feet in the air, I scanned carefully for heaven. I think it was just too dark, too cloudy a day to find it. But, it’s there. It has to be, because I know that’s the place she calls home now.

For years, we had big spoken plans of heading to Amsterdam together some day. I just wish I could have spoken those plans into reality. I so wanted that plane to be taking us there, together, instead of flying me home to meet her at her in-home hospital bed.

Five hours on a plane wasn't enough time to prepare myself for what this would all feel like, what she would look like, what our last days together would be like. Fifteen months of doctor appointments, intensive treatments, new medications, nightmares, more bad news, and, still, none of us were ready for her to go, except for Him. We all wanted to hear her laugh, see her smile, watch her walk down the stairs, listen to her advice one more time. One more time would never have been enough though.

When I was little, she’d tuck me in bed with the same nightly child's prayer along with a grocery list of names she asked God to watch over. I never understood how she remembered all the cousins, friends, sick ones, lost ones, loved ones, all these names, all these people, all these lives. It was second nature to her though. She cared so much. Starting the night I got home on November 11th, I would internally shout that same child's prayer with a bit more focus on her: “As we lay her down to sleep, I pray my Lord her soul you’ll keep. If she should die before she wakes, I pray my Lord her soul you’ll take.” I couldn’t ever say this one aloud, because I still had so much hope. I had hope that she might sit up, look around, smile, hop out of bed, feel better, be better. Miracles happen. I just don’t get why they didn’t happen for her.

From the very beginning of these 15 months, she was too strong to let her hair fall so she shaved it off and placed a blonde wig on top of her smooth head. Last Thanksgiving eve, I cried alone in my Jack-and-Jill bathroom, washing, combing, and styling that blonde wig. She peered in to check on me. Of course, she did. I snuffed up and stared down at someone else’s hair rambling about how beautiful I was going to make it for the holiday. After curving the ends inward to give it that done-up face hugging effect, I walked past her lying in bed, and placed the wig on the faceless mannequin head that sat on her bathroom counter, missing the natural volume of her old hair that she would complain about on humid summer evenings.

During my own sleepless nights, I'd fill up online shopping carts with colorful silk scarves. I hoped that, at some point, she might want to wear these soft elegant bandanas to cover up instead. I knew that wig made her pretty little scalp itch so bad, but she wore it to protect us from any explicit visibility of her illness. She was always protecting us.

Her hair started to grow back after chemo, which gave the outwardly misleading message that she got better when, in reality, it stopped working just like the all the other treatments.

The five of us began parenting each other because the two of them had more important things to do. We'd yell and get more easily upset and impatient with one another because of the pent-up anger & confusion at our current lives. But we always reconciled even harder. She taught us never to go to bed angry.

Extraordinary meals were dropped ordinarily from a meal train and then more regularly and randomly when things started getting worse. She’d eat some veggies and watch the six of us scarf down everything that she was starving herself from, simply enchanted by the togetherness of our newly re-instituted family dinners. Flowers popped up on our porch unfailingly during every season, as if it were spring 24/7 in our house. Today, there’s a garden in my kitchen. Carefully worded notes were delivered too. She couldn’t read all of them though. At the end, we read to her, and while she stopped speaking, tears still fell from her sparkling eyes. She heard. She knew.

On November 19th, we choked up our goodnights, likely holding her hands tighter than was comfortable for her bony body, and, together, we prayed the Guardian Angel prayer.. and I the child’s prayer in my own head. Some days, I think I should have prayed harder. Maybe I could have used more of my wishes on her. We all tried. She and my dad tried hardest. They’d both apologize for not doing enough, but they did so much. We all had hope. We all felt guilt. We all tried our best.

I wanted so many more years of the singing, and dancing, and laughing, and hugging, and kissing, and talking, and joking, and walking, and shopping, and decorating, and eating, and exploring. I wanted so many more years of her physical presence, but I will get used to her quiet presence. I like to think when the world’s most still late-night and early morning, I will sit in silence, hear her quiet presence, and adore that quiet present. You were a dream, momma. Please meet me in mine.

What keeps you up at night?

Momma, let's pillowtalk. First off, what does heaven look like?