"She's dead."

It was Christmas Day.  Our daughters, their husbands, and our brand-new granddaughter (our first!) had enjoyed a tamale dinner cooked by my awesome wife…and now we were sitting in the living room opening presents. 

The phone rings.  Anita answers.  The look on her face is not the sort of look one has when a loved one calls to wish Merry Christmas.  She closes her eyes, leans forward, and says “oh-nooo.” 

I knew it was my dad.  I had been expecting this call, because I had returned just a few days before from my last visit to Wells, Nevada to see my dad and stepmother.  Esther was in the last stages of liver cancer, and my 80 year-old dad was doing his best to be her caregiver.  His brief announcement on the phone Christmas Day is the title of this post.

I have known her since I was 14, when my dad divorced my mom to marry Esther.  To say this second marriage was rocky is an understatement.  But there is one thing that would cause the strife-meter to go off the charts, and that was merely the mention of God in her presence, whether by my dad or anyone else.  Any discussion about God was strictly off-limits, or there would be Hell to pay, for my dad.

But that’s not the end of the story.

There was a moment, while drowning in the sea of depression, after the diagnosis and the doctor’s pronouncement of only months to live that the idea of ending it all now seemed like the best way out to Esther.  The pain-killing drugs offered the vehicle to make that happen.  But it didn’t work.

She was taken to the place where staff watches over those who might do harm to themselves, and upon my dad’s first visit to her in that place, he says the heretofore unthinkable thing, the thing that he had trained himself to avoid.  He said, “Why don’t you just give it up to God?”  Her response:  “Tell me what I need to do.”

Miraculous.

My dad told me that he led Esther in a prayer to receive the Lord Jesus into her life that very moment.  And there was a night and day difference in her countenance and in her words.

He was precise in the prayer too, which is no surprise to me.  He told me that the prayer included asking forgiveness of her sins, her belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and His resurrection from the dead. 

Later, she thanked my dad for praying with her…and thanked him for who he was.  If you knew Esther, you would be overwhelmed at that, as I was.

When I saw her a couple of weeks ago, it was during a very brief awake moment on her deathbed.  I took her hand and greeted her, and there was a softness and sweetness I had never seen in her before.

I am sorry that she died the horrible death she did.  I’m also sorry that she had to see death’s door before she was frightened enough of what was on the other side that she finally fell to her knees before the Author of Life.  But I’m thankful for the peace that my dad has, knowing that she is in Heaven.