My sister called us and told us to come home to Alabama where my mother lived. The time had come.
We hopped the first plane to Atlanta and my brother-in-law had come to pick us up. When we got to the parking lot, the car would not start and we had to find a way to get a jump and this was before cell phones. The process took a couple of hours and we were almost two hours from the hospital in Alabama.
When we arrived in the hospital, you could feel death was near. My mother had waited for us to come in before she died.
Maxie had been on the outs with her mother and they were not speaking. My mother had Maxie promise that she would reach out to her mother and get the relationship going again in any way she could. Maxie agreed and did reform the relationship with her mother until her death.
My father had died several years before and my mother had recently been talking about walking again in the garden with him and seeing beautiful things (I often thought of the garden when I walked along the stream at the Delaware Water Gap). As she got closer to dying, the stories increased. She also pointed to a star and said that was Dads star.
As her heart was giving out, she raised her hand like she was seeing something. Maxie and I were both sitting on the same side of the bed holding her hand as she lifted it like she was trying to touch something. At the end, she turned toward us. Her eyes had a brilliant blue light, so bright that I had to turn my gaze away for a second, then it was gone. Later, Maxie told me that she had seen the same light and had the same experience. No one else saw it. The light was pure and bright; beyond description because I have never seen anything like it.
I do not know what the light meant and I think that it is presumptuous for anyone to think that they know. My hope is that is was a message that there is something beyond this life, but I have no way to know that.
Sometimes we should just accept a gift as is and not question it.
Gary Canant
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