My mother died on a Good Friday.
Which, in a way, was amusing because she’d long been at odds with God since my father’s death, and she had little use for organized religion since age 5 after some nun whacked her for asking questions. That is, until her final few months.
After befriending a retired Air Force chaplain at her swim class, her thoughts about, in her words, “that religious crap” had greatly mellowed.
In fact, her last actions on this earth were to talk about a light she was seeing. When asked by my sister Julie if she should get a nurse, Mom said “nu-uh” as casually as if she were saying “no thanks” to a second martini. Make that a third martini. She then raised her arms upward and breathed her last.
I was not there. I was in California when Mom passed. But I had gone home to see her a couple of weeks earlier.
It was not easy seeing my mom, then 87, in a hospice facility. This was the lady I knew to be indestructible.
The woman once had a heart attack and didn’t notice. Coworkers finally convinced her to get checked out, only for doctors at the local clinic to discover she’d had an attack three days before. “OK,” she told them. “I’ll drive myself to the hospital.” Uh, I don’t think so, Mrs. Perrotta.
Doctors at Walter Reed Medical Center scheduled her for a bypass. She emerged out of surgery, and when I got to see her, she was a yellow color with tubes going every which way. A shaky hand reached for me, her baby, her loving youngest. Then that hand reached for a pen … and scrawled out “Grass?” She wanted to know if I had cut the grass.
Even in the hospice, Mom apparently asked attendants if she could use the weight room at the attached rehabilitation facility. “Uh, I don’t know, ma’am. Nobody here’s ever asked that.”
So, yeah, seeing my Jersey-tough mother fading from stage four lung cancer, barely able to walk, was tough stuff. I needed to gird myself for my visits. And that meant music.
To and fro from my sister Dodie’s to the facility, I found myself playing one particular song: the Kim Walker-Smith and Jesus Culture live version of “He Loves Us.” For some odd reason, that song and that song only.
Christian artist John Mark McMillan had written the song right after the death of his best friend in a car accident. As uplifting as the song is, it comes from a place of grief. I hadn’t known that.
The live Jesus Culture version is 8:53 long, almost exactly the time it took to make the drive. Punch play when pulling out, the song fading out when pulling into park.
“He loves us. Oh, how he loves us.” I’d sing with Walker-Smith, swaying side-to-side to the ¾ time.
The song carried me in and out of the facility, helping me to hang out with my mom without falling to pieces.
So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss,
and my heart turns violently inside of my chest.
I don’t have time to make plain these regrets when I think about the way
He loves us, Oh, how he loves us!
He loves us, Oh, how he loves us!
He loves us, Oh, how he loves …
Mom passed away less than two weeks later. I did not head right home. I decided to stay for Easter and fly out Thursday morning. On Wednesday night, I kept my commitment to play bass on the worship team at our small non-denominational church in the Valley.
I arrived and spotted the set list. No way. On it, “He Loves Us.” “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I thought. “How in the world am I going to make it through playing this?”
We get into the song, and sure enough, I am bawling, tears flowing so hard I had to worry about electrocuting myself.
I look over at the worship leader, Paul, at the keyboards, and to my shock, Paul was excitedly shaking his head up and down at me, eyes wide and bright, with a huge, goofy grin.
What in the world? I’m practically heaving my heart all over the platform and he’s as giddy as if we were playing “Twist and Shout” at the Rose Bowl with Paul McCartney.
I managed to finish. Worship set over, I headed out to the front atrium to catch my breath, get hold of myself. Paul followed about 30 seconds later. Still with that goofy grin.
“You don’t understand!” I blurted before he could say anything. “That’s the song I played back and forth when going to see my mom!”
“I know,” he replied. “I put it on the set list, but then realized we had played it a lot lately. So, I scratched it out. Felt led to add it back. Three times I scratched it out. And three times the Lord said, “Put it back in!”
He loves us. Oh, how he loves us.
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