Catch of the Day: Well Done, Thou Good and Faithful Servant

This past Sunday we buried my 95 year old aunt. In my last blog post, William Booth and Major Jean, I told about August 8, when Lorraine received the General William Booth founder's award. If you haven't had a chance to read it, now would be a great time to click over.

In the early 1930’s Great Depression years, my grandmother Etha Fish brought five year old Lorraine to her home to raise her alongside my mother and my uncles. Etha and Lorraine’s mother, Jean, were sisters. Their maiden name was Fleming. Lorraine’s mother had divorced and was not well, so Lorraine’s early years were spent in an institution for young children until my grandmother stepped up. Ninety years later, I followed my grandmother’s example and opened our home to Lorraine. She lived with us on six different occasions while she recuperated from her latest ailment, all totaled close to a year.

During those times I became acquainted with not only her, but with my family, since she was the last surviving member of her generation and held all the family stories and secrets. She said over and over again that God sent her the right people at the right time to help her along in life. Her aunt Etha, my husband and me, co-workers, friends. She was so appreciative of every grace God sent to her through her friendships.

In the days after Sunday, August 8 she was not well. She moved in with us that day to recover, but by Wednesday she was in the hospital for the fifth time in two months. When she was discharged, the doctor talked privately to me and said that there was nothing more they could do and that she could never live alone again.

By September, Hospice stepped in to aid in caring for her, another grace sent by God. When the man came to our home to do paperwork for at-home care, he asked her about her final wishes. Would she sign a DNR, Do Not Resuscitate?

“Absolutely not! I’m a fighter and the Lord hasn’t called me home. He isn’t through with me yet.”

She became unable to walk and refused to use a wheelchair, so I began pushing her in her walker as she sat leaning on the “Do not sit while moving” warning sign. In the mornings after breakfast she’d say, “Take me to my room. It’s time to go in my closet and talk to the Lord.” Every day.

In the evenings we’d sit on the swing on my back deck and talk. We talked a lot about Job and his suffering and how he never gave up on his faith. She knew Job’s pain because she was in it at the moment. Each time a new symptom manifested itself she became weaker and weaker, just like Job, but she never gave up hope that she would return to her home two hours away in a small North Carolina mountain community named Fine’s Creek. She planned how she would deal with her oxygen tank. She asked me to look online for an electric wheel chair that would fit her house. She made phone calls to friends about her plants she wanted to care for.

I never took that hope away from her and planned with her how to make it happen. After all, God is a God of miracles, and I began to feel I was in the presence of a great miracle. But as her symptoms worsened, I realized I could no longer care for her at home, and the Hospice nurse made it happen to transfer her to their campus. I tried to encourage her, but she did say one time, “Looks like I won’t be going back to my home.” One time only she said that. I told her perhaps the Lord was preparing her a different home, but she said, “He isn’t finished with me yet.”

How she suffered. She wouldn’t give up. She read her Bible daily as long as she was able. She prayed before meals, even thanking the Lord for the bite of pudding the nurse brought her in the afternoon. She felt like the Lord had something for her to do and she was willing, in all her aches and pains, to trust in His wisdom. My prayer was, “Please Lord, call her home, your servant has suffered enough.” Then I’d add the prayer that never fails, “Thy will be done.”

She was right. The Lord wasn’t finished with her yet. “What are you thinking, Lord,” I’d ask. Again and again I’d pray for her to be relieved of her suffering, and add “Thy Will Be done.” But I wasn’t sincere in that part of the prayer. I wanted Him to do it my way and take away her pain.

She got better, so much better that she was transferred to a long term care facility. Years before, I had promised her I would not put her in a rest home. “Please don’t send me to a rest home” she’d say, and here I was, putting her in a rest home rather than bringing her to my home.

So she went into that belly of the ambulance that transferred her to the rest home. Remember Jonah doing what he could to stay away from Nineveh? There she was, like Jonah, going to the one place she pleaded not to be sent. That’s when I finally sincerely prayed, “Thy will be done. Use her Lord.”

I don’t know what happened or how her Lord used her after I helped her get settled in her newest bed, because, you see, the facility was on covid restrictions and I could not visit her in person. I was forced to knock at the outside window of her room and wave at her and talk to her through cell phones. I waited for the day I could talk to her in person. It never came.

My faith was made stronger than ever after living with this person of God. Faith taught me that the Lord indeed used her in that rest home. Only when the Lord was finished with her did she draw her last breath. Alone.

When the facility called me to say she had passed away overnight, they said I could come be with her until the funeral home picked her up. Finally I held her hand. Finally I stroked her arm. Finally she was in no pain. She had done her Lord’s bidding until the very, very end.

On a warm December Sunday, we said our public farewells to her. I gasped when I saw how the little church was fixed. There below the sign proclaiming, "The Word of God is not Bound," sat the Salvation Army flag with a white bow on the finial of the flagpole, a symbol of a death. Beside it was the statue of General William Booth and the Founder's Award she was given in August.

On the altar table were visual memories so vivid I could feel her with us.

In Salvation Army speech, she didn't just pass away. Not a soldier of God. She had worked through the ranks already to major, but in her final act, she was promoted to glory. Look below the words. There are ceramic animals representing her pets and the animals she loved so well. On the left is her Army bonnet and just beyond that out of the picture is her matching uniform. Covering the box with her ashes is a miniature Salvation Army flag. In the center of the table is a ceramic Christmas tree, one of hundreds that she made and gifted to family and friends. Beside it is the Christmas pillow that she kept on the pew where she sat to alleviate her back pain. After the Christmas season, she turned the decorated side to the rear, but she still used that pillow.

One request I had was that the corps play the timbrels, instruments kin to tambourines. Years ago, when she went from storefront to storefront in the nearby town of Waynesville, she played the timbrel and held it out for people to donate to the Salvation Army. There is nothing quite like singing "There is Power in the Blood" accompanied by the tinny ring of timbrels.

After the service we walked to the mountain top where corps members had dug a hole themselves. After the prayers and internment, we took turns shoveling the dirt. The sound of dirt landing on the box is one that I will hold in my heart forever. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.