Easter Sunday

Im sitting on an airplane returning to the DR exactly 4 weeks after I left.  Time has a funny way of working it's way out, doesn't it?  It feels as though a lifetime has gone by. 

My grandma passed on Sunday March 27, Easter night.  She spent her final week in her home surrounded by family and friends.  I had the privilege of working with Hospice and caring for her intensely in her final days.  In all my time as an oncology PA and previously as a hospice tech, I have never walked through a more peaceful death.  Perhaps Holy Week played a role.  Perhaps being with my parents and sharing such an intimate experience.  Or perhaps the feeling that I've never been closer to Heaven.

That final week brought many tears, stories and dependency.  It brought healing of relationships and just an overwhelming love.  My grandma remained coherent until her final hours when it was just my parents and I.  And it was in those moments that my mom reached for her bible, her book of prayers and her hand.

We're not sure how many of our words she comprehended in her final moments but I'm confident she was not alone. That Christ was with her.  As my grandma slipped further from us her final hours were spent crying out for her "Father" "my Lord" and "Jesus."

Never have I more firmly believed in Christ or felt His presence.  What an Easter Sunday indeed.

I was never that close with my grandma even though she lived with us in the winters after my grandpa passed.  But this past month brought us so close with many many shared memories that can only be thought of as gifts.  Perhaps it goes without saying that the greatest was this...to see her faith and the way Jesus brought her home to him.

For the first time I sat at a funeral confident of where the person who passed was.  Not just with my grandpa as her obituary said, but with Christ.  And in those weeks before she passed that's all my grandmother wanted, to be with her maker.

I pray that someday I can look death boldly in the eye with faith as strong as my grandma's and be ready without a doubt for the home we were made for.  In Heaven, with our savior.