Where Would I Go? Finding A Way Through Pain

I wrote a blog post on Mother's Day 2023 called The God of Never. It was during a time when my mom was battling glioblastoma brain cancer. Looking back now, I think I was living on autopilot.  I got up each morning with a sense of mixed dread and responsibility. Dread because at the time my mom was battling brain cancer, my dad was fighting a battle with dementia. I would lay in bed, afraid to make a sound, listening for my parent’s bedroom door to open, and my dad’s cane to make that clicking noise down the hallway. I’d open my eyes and take a deep breath knowing the day had started even if I wasn’t ready for it.  

Sometimes I wouldn’t hear the door, so I would tip-toe into the living room and see my dad sitting on the couch, cane in hand, staring into the darkness, wearing the same clothes he went to bed with the night before. I whispered, “Daddy, why are you up so early?” When he didn’t answer, I turned on the Gaither Homecoming videos on YouTube so he could sing while I got ready for work. 

Sometimes my mom would be up, rummaging through the closet in the bedroom or the dresser drawers looking for something to wear. My momma who was always the epitome of fashion would be standing in front of the closet in a T-shirt with a camisole on top, worn out pants and unmatched shoes. And every article of clothing in the closets and drawers were taken out and shoved in corners around the room or all over the bed or the floor of the closet. Mom never sat still and it was her way of organizing things. Her brain just wouldn’t cooperate with her need to have everything in order.  

My momma always wanted to help, even when she wasn’t able. Washing clothes was her favorite thing to do at my house, but she couldn’t remember how to do it. I came up with the idea of putting numbers on the machines—1 Put the clothes in this machine and push this button.  2 Move the clothes to this machine. I thought I’d really stumbled upon something. That I’d solved the problem, but every time she would take the clothes out of the washing machine and with frustration say, “They’re still wet!” She would put them back in the washing machine and start to hit the wash button again. 

And I would repeat, “I know, Mom. We just washed them. Now we have to put them in the dryer.” She would look at me with utter confusion and try to make sense out of what I’d just said until I had to take the clothes from her hands and out of the washer and place them in the dryer myself, all while reminding her of my not so brilliant number system.  

And then there was the cooking. She always wanted to help with the cooking. At first it was just stirring the vegetables with the wrong end of the spoon or putting way too many onions in the green beans. Setting the table wrong. Nothing major. But then it got dangerous. Putting objects in the toaster, grabbing hot pots and pans with her bare hands, putting plastic in the oven and having it melt all the way from the top rack to the bottom.  

And she wanted to be independent. She wanted to be in charge of their medicine. I had the medication placed into individual, daily packets from the pharmacy thinking that would help. But she inevitably tried to take the wrong medicine. She lost all memory of the days of the week and the times of the day. But we practiced for hours, sitting at the bar. I would quiz her. “What packet do you need now? Which one of these are you going to open?” I finally had to take that away when she took her medicine and daddy’s medicine in the time it took me to go to the refrigerator and pour a glass of juice.  

She had this obsession with writing everything down. Anytime you told her something, she would say, “I’ve got to write that down.” And I would let her. And she would ask me how to spell simple words like “bread.” I would look over her shoulder and all of the letters would be wrong. She wrote grocery lists, doctor’s appointments, directions for treatment, people’s names, and I would say, “You don’t have to write that down. I’ll remember it for you.” I didn’t realize until I was going through her things after she died that she had written down everything all of her life. Visits with us, doctor appointments and everything the doctor said, what someone who visited their house liked and disliked for dinner. It was her way, and I didn’t understand. I tried to take it from her, and she couldn’t explain why she had to do it. Not to remember but to hang on to the last bit of what was normal, what she could control. 

Sometimes I made her cry and that was the absolute worst. She wanted to go home and I would go into my argument why she couldn’t leave for the 50th time, and I didn’t always do it with compassion but with frustration. And she would cry.  

Or she would try to help with dinner and almost cut herself with a knife or get burnt on the stove, and I would yell out of panic. I never was good in emergency situations. And she would cry. And then I would say “I’m so sorry,” and we would both cry.  

And moving her and daddy to the memory care unit was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I felt like I was deserting them—shoving them off on someone else to take care of. It came after mom had tried to escape several times from the caregiver who stayed with them while we were at work. She hated being “babysat,” unable to have her freedom or do the things that she was used to doing. She wanted to go home and that just wasn’t an option. 

I told her about a place where they could have their own space. Steve and I wouldn’t be breathing down their neck all the time. Their own apartment. Someone would cook and clean for them, make sure they had their medicine, but it would be their own place. She wanted to move. What she really wanted was to go home, but if that wasn’t an option, she just wanted away from me. Not really. But that is what it felt like. 

Steve and I, my sister and her family set up an apartment for them in memory care, and I could see it in her face. “This isn’t home. And this isn’t anything like you said it would be.” So the guilt set in. And I don’t think it ever left. 

I said “goodbye” to my mom in that memory care unit. I sat by her bed, watching each breath, counting how long it was before she took the next one. I was asleep when she took her last.  

But I think she woke me up as she left that room. I remember dozing off in the recliner at the foot of the bed, my sister in the bed beside her, my dad asleep on the couch in the living room. And I woke up suddenly, eyes focused squarely on my momma in that bed, and something told me that she had left. I walked over and touched her chest, watched the vein in her neck move up and down, so I woke my sister.  I whispered, “I think mom’s gone.”  

We stayed by the bed and held her hands and watched until the vein in her neck stopped moving. 

Fast forward 8 months and I still miss her. Sometimes I sit and wait for her to come back as quietly as she slipped out. But I know that it isn’t time yet. And there is something deep inside that tells me that she isn’t really gone. When I lead worship, I sense her watching and singing with me. When I FaceTime my grandson, I hear her laughing along with his antics. When I visit my daddy, I hear her say, “Take care of him. He can’t do nothing by himself.” 

If I’m honest, this isn’t the way I wanted the story to go. What I wanted was a miracle. I wanted to wake up one morning and find her sitting in the living room reading her Bible and writing down her favorite verses in one of her notebooks, with breakfast on the stove and zucchini bread in the oven. I wanted to sit down and have one of those mother-daughter conversations with her—ask her what I should do about this or that and have her say, “Pray about it” or “It must be the Lord’s will.” I wanted the doctor to say, “I don’t know how this happened, but the tumor is gone!” And then we could tell the whole medical staff that we know the God of Never. He never breaks a promise. He never abandons His children. He is a God of miracles. 

Even though that wasn’t the way the story ended, it doesn’t change what I think about God. People have asked me, “How do you come to terms with the fact that God would allow two people who served Him their entire lives end up with brain cancer and dementia? What kind of God does that?” 

They are not the first to ask those questions because I asked them myself.  I wasn’t angry at God. Just confused. He told me to believe for the miraculous. He told me to never give up but have faith. And I did believe for the miraculous. I didn’t give up. I did have faith. And so did my mom. I never doubt the faith of my mom for one minute. So why didn’t He answer? The truth is…He did answer. It just wasn’t the way I wanted. But He is God, and I am not. Even if He tried to explain it to me, I probably wouldn’t get it. Not as long as I’m trapped in this body with my limited perspective and understanding. “My thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.”  

He never promised that life would be easy. As a matter of fact, He said the opposite. “In this world you will have trouble, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” 

He never promised that I’d never get worn out or weary of it all. On the contrary, He said, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” 

He never promised that my loved ones would never die. But He did say, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me though he were dead, yet shall he live.” 

He never promised that I would know all the answers. But He asked me to trust Him…trust His heart for me. 

There is a place in the Gospels where Jesus is giving some hard preaching about His death. It was so difficult for many to comprehend that some of the people who were following Him said, “This is too hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?” And they stopped following Jesus. They couldn’t make sense out of His words. They couldn’t understand His plan, so they deserted Him. Jesus turned to the twelve and said, “Are you going to leave too?” And Peter looks at Jesus and says these words: “Lord, where would we go?” 

When I think about everything my mom went through or when I visit my dad and can’t have a conversation with him, I don’t hear those voices anymore that demand an answer to life’s unfair and cruel twists and turns. I hear the voice of Jesus asking me, “Are you going to leave too?” Logic tells me I could. Culture tells me I should. But all I can say is “Lord, where would I go?”  

From Blog Post God of Never 

My children are never without hope. And there is never a time when I don’t keep my promises. Find one place in the Bible where I commanded my children to give up and accept defeat. You won’t find it because that is not my nature...and it is not yours. 

 https://www.insidethecirclewv.com/blog/the-god-of-never