The Hope of Fallen Earth

 

In the Valley of the Shadow 

beneath the linen fold

a quiet hand stopped holding back

what was not ours to hold.

Gone the glow of fading days

and waves left whispering to the shore.

Ahead the hope of fallen earth

heaping time on time no more.

Sweet the taste of sorrow's tears

Soft the eyes from crying 

when all that's left of all the years...

that life that follows dying.

(c) Tom Kapanka 2-4-2022

Late Wednesday night, my wife Julie was reading quietly aloud "... Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me..." the fourth verse of the 23rd Psalm. Her voice was calm and comforting as she read on to close with "...Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever." 

We were in the ER of Mercy hospital... that was our valley of the shadow of death. 

Three hours before we had been sitting at the small dining room table in the "apartment" we had created for her mother in our home's favorite room. It has a fireplace, a kitchenette, a private bathroom, living room and spacious bedroom, and Mom has enjoyed living there with us since last summer. It was a typical evening other than the fact that we were all tired and started saying our "G'nights" around 8:30.  Prayer time began with a review of those we pray for every night and a few others who had come to mind while sitting there. "How's Ruth? Mom asked, referring to a dear friend of ours who had gone through her own "valley of the shadow" just a few months ago. And so the prayer time included Ruth. This was all as routine as Mom's other bedtime rituals. In fact, she was brushing her teeth when I said my "G'night, Mom" through the bathroom door. "G'night, Tom," she replied, and I went upstairs. 

Two or three minutes later, Julie heard a load scream unlike any sound we've ever heard in our home before. "Tom, did you leave the TV on in the family room?" She asked. "No. I'm sure I turned it off." We ran down the stairs to find Mom on the carpeted floor at the foot of the bed. 

"What happened, Momma," Julie cried. "I don't know," Mom moaned, as her hand motioned to her face. She was trying to explain the unbearable pain n her head. "Please call an ambulance." 

I made the 911 call and stayed in conversation while EMT was in route. About eight minutes later four EMT's were surrounding mom, but she was no longer able to answer their questions as she had ours just moments before. When she tried to speak only a moan came out. Her blood pressure was unthinkably high (245 over something), and her eyes prompted one of the men to whisper to another: "brain bleed?" (Later this was confirmed, but the term the doctor used was hemorrhagic stroke.) 

Fast forward, and we were sitting beside Mom in the ER where Julie was reading the 23rd Psalm from her phone. Mom was non-responsive but her breathing was steady. The reading was for us as much as for her, but we have always been firm believers that non-responsive people at that point in time are listening to what we say as if hearing someone talking when we feel trapped in a dream before waking. 

When Julie was done reading, I played the following video clip softly into Mom's ear. Her eyes were barely open, still and unfocused on anything, but I believe her ears were alert. You see.... this video clip is one Mom often played at night since the last day in August when her husband of seventy years had passed away. It was from their 50th Anniversary gathering in Waverly, Kansas.

By this time, our daughter Emily had arrived and was holding her grandmother's hand beneath the bed linen. Each of us would do the same in the hours to come. Our other two daughters would be their shortly. (The fact that Security allowed five guests in the small ER room when Covid restrictions allow only one, confirmed that all of the staff on the floor knew what the doctor had told us in the moments after we'd arrived: "All we can do is make her comfortable.") 

As I played this song to Mom, her posture changed. She relaxed, her breathing became calm and quiet. I had absolutely no doubt she heard it and perhaps took hope in being on the brink of a reunion she so often spoke of. That very night at the end of prayer time, she looked at the picture of her husband on the nightstand and said, "I miss your Daddy so much. He was the love of my life. I want to be with him." Julie replied as she always did, "I know, Momma. We miss him, too, but we're so thankful for the wonderful memories we have until God calls us home." The exchange was common, and we'd speak of happy things to come... of births and birthdays and Dad's memorial gathering in June (a big reunion of sorts). Mom would smile and nod, but using her phone, there in her bed, she would watch this video that we had digitized from VHS last August. We could hear it through the door.

Wednesday night, she heard Dad singing the song again, two or three times as I played the clip over and over. 

Kim and Natalie arrived and we spent the next two hours telling stories and talking as if Mom could hear every word. The girls left after 1:00AM, and the ER staff moved the three of us to a more private room, where we thought we'd be until they moved us upstairs after 9:00AM's scheduled meeting with hospice, but at 5:23AM, Mom's calm breathing slowed... then stopped... and she joined the love of her life and The One who gives life everlasting.

 

Author's Note:
The line in the poem: "Gone the the glow of fading days / and waves left whispering to the shore..." came from the evening captured in this video of Mom viewing a Grand Haven Sunset last September.
In the line "Ahead the hope of fallen earth..." fallen had originally ended in "ing" in reference to the last act of graveside procedures, but I changed it to fallen as in the state of this world without the hope of what's ahead "...heaped like time on time no more..." contrasts the resettling of earth's sediment (the grave) upon the life no longer restricted by time.

In the two days since that night in the ER, we have been counting blessings that mingle with grief. Here is one of the last videos we made with Mom. It was her first time with her new Granddaughter who had been born exactly one month before in the same hospital where we were that night.