Tender Mercies

Sometimes if you are aware of God’s simple nudging you realize you have seen a person for the last time. I think this is a gift, a tender mercy or great compassion. He gives us a nudge to make sure we are right with a person or to allow us a good-bye without regret.


Over in a flash
thunder
The hug good bye


I have been afforded many of these moments in my life. I saw my grandmother West in her room at Good Samaritan in Dayton surrounded by my aunts, uncles and cousins after her stroke. She slept most of the time, but when I went to leave, my Aunt Francis said, "Ruthie, honey, say good-bye, she will know." I was leaving for California the next day. I stood before her and she opened her beautiful blue eyes and in a lucid moment said, “I love you Ruthie.” The whole room filled with tears as I began to cry along with my whole family. “good-bye grandma.” I managed as I turned and walked down the halls.
There is something about the halls of a hospital that allow for death. Like a portal into another world, one can speak of death there and be heard. It is a language understood and held in deep reverence. Do not let the professional manner of the staff fool you. I have agonized in the halls of hospitals as staff as I learned to let people go. Death is real stuff there. I left my presence in the room with my extended family in the realm of memory. This memory though, I knew, was ordain by God and was a precious gift I would treasure as long as I could remember... a lucid moment and her blue eyes.
The morning we left, my ex’s grandmother, the only one on his side whom I still have a real attachment to, after numerous nervous good-byes waved us off. We slowly drove down the tree lined street. She looked so small and frail and alone in her grief over our departure. I was sure I would never see her again in this life.
Lennie Jane West passed sometime in the first few months I live in Southern California. No way to get home, I mourned in solitude with no friend to share it with. I clung to the gift of the good-bye and knew it meant more than a plane ticket... the blue eyes and certainty of her I love you.
Zelma Zechar Ressler passed the night before we could visit her. We had moved to Texas and had gone to Ohio over Labor Day. We stayed a week for a funeral instead. I don’t know why we came so close to miss her, but I saw God’s hand in her passing as reassurance to me that he had taken her home to himself. The gospel was preached at her service and my brother-in-law listened. I watched him from behind. God is good. That was the last time I saw Danny.
I was in Ohio when my father had a heart attack. I went to see Gene and Fern with my best childhood friend. Gene and Fern were my second parents, family to me. As I went to slip out through the garage I glimpsed Gene in his T.V. chair. He looked up and gave me a sheepish grin. I knew.
He passed the following year and I was glad I spent the afternoon on the back porch with the family talking like we always did forever about everything and more.
So you asked, when did I last see Michael? When he hugged me good-bye after I told him I was marrying and leaving for Florida in a month. He hugged me like he meant it. That is how he wanted to leave it. So we did.