Forever bless'd

I found out on Friday night that Grandma Donna was feverish and weaker even than she has been.  It's been well over three years since she was diagnosed with cancer, and slowly she's faded - baking less, sitting more.  She and grandpa moved into town the other year, and they stopped going to so many basketball games.  She put together a scrapbook with the help of her oldest grandchild, and when I would go visit these last years, I would sit for hours looking at that book and asking question about how life used to be.  I loved it - to know her history was to know mine.

In January when I was back in Kansas, she was in the hospital.  I visited her there, and we looked at old slides through a mechanical viewer.  When she was discharged back to the apartment, she was on hospice.  The last time I saw her was a Thursday afternoon - January 6, it must have been.  I stopped by the apartment at Kidron Bethel and took my seat on the left side of the love seat next to the end table that holds the peanut M&M's.  Grandma was in her recliner as usual.  While I was there the hospice chaplain stopped by and introduced himself and made small talk with Grandma and Grandpa, which isn't always easy.  There were the serious questions too:

How is it with yourself, with others, with your God?  Good.  Good.  Good.   

We left when she was tired, and as I walked toward my car, I wondered if it was the last time I'd see her.  Probably so.

Yesterday during the Sunday school hour after worship, we had a hymn sing.  We sat in our four parts and used the blue hymnal, singing song after song, acapella.  I sat behind my friends, and next to a woman who also spent some years at Grace Hill and who, yesterday, helped carry me along the alto line.  At about noon PST, someone, another native Kansas in fact, requested "For all the saints," #636: 

For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy name, O Jesus, be forever bless'd.  Alleluia, Alleluia. 

It's a funeral song.  Then other songs were requested - one from someone's dad's funeral, another from someone's grandpa's.  And we sang, boy can these folks sing.  As I thought about what song to request, I wondered which ones grandma has chosen for her memorial.  I'll find out soon. 

Surely she is a saint who from her labors now rests peacefully, as it should be.  A good life and a good death surrounded by her husband of decades and her four children.  She breathed her last at about 3:30 CST, less than two hours after we were singing memorial songs in Seattle.  I can't think of a better way to accompany her out of this world.

It is still the Easter season of the church year, a good season to die: death and new life, loss and resurrection, and that eternal sense that our bodies and our lives may not be what we had thought, after all.   Dear Grandma, be forever bless'd, allelua, alleluia.