My mother's death

My mother died last night—I got the call around 11:30 p.m., and I knew as soon as the phone rang, "This is it." It was the end of a long fight (but I detest that metaphor) with cancer that first began several years ago when I was still living in Salt Lake City.

I feel an impulse to talk about this, but I don't know what to say. I'll say at least this for now: It was a shitty way to die. She was peaceful at the end, I'm told—spiritually as well as physically. But it's been a terrible, terrible process of her body going haywire and devouring itself. I've spent months wishing she would just let go already so she wouldn't suffer anymore. She was on hospice for a year. I hope she accomplished or obtained whatever she wanted with that time. And I hope that I provided what she wanted from me during that time.

As usual with me, I'm more angry than sad, though I'm both.

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Now the time of liberation has come;
and my redeemed will declare
the loving-kindness of their Lord,
and all that he has bestowed upon them
according to his everlasting goodness.

In all their afflictions, he was afflicted.
The angel of his presence intervened for them.
And in his love, he bore them
and carried them all their days.

(Adapted from D&C 133:52-53)

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The gaping chasm between those words and the lived reality of my mother's horrible decline is faith.