Mama’s Will

Mama let me be a lot of things, but three of the most important were these: she let me be one of her children; she let me become a minister; and in her later years she let me have her power of attorney. Had I had that “power” first, we could have resolved a lot of other issues…like what size switch was appropriate for the crime!

When she died eleven springs ago, her family and friends gathered in the Chapel of the Cross near her birthplace, and, as a combination of my three roles, I asked them to think of the place as a board room for a corporate law firm in keeping with my power of attorney. In addition to thanking God almighty for Eloise, we came for a more mundane cause: to see what she bequeathed to us in her last will and testament. Of course, we might be taken by surprise as to how close the mundane and the sacred can come in moments like this when we start talking about our inheritance, since that pretty much covers everything that we think we own and are in the first place.

As for her financial portfolio upon her timely death, there remained hardly enough to pay for the cremation and tombstone. No stocks or bonds; no insurance; no equities. The only real claim she had on any land upon her death was half of a grave in her family’s burial plot behind this Chapel; she had given the other half to her first-born son after his untimely death, partially explaining her choice to be cremated in order to make more room on the grounds of her rather limited estate. Even though it was less than twenty square feet in size, that piece of earth runs all the way down into eternity. She and Jimmy are doing a timeshare with their parcel of land that now owns them.

So what’s left of Mama’s limited estate to share, since there’s evidently nothing left to possess? Mama’s will is like her grave plot: it makes up in depth what it lacks in length and width. And like her grave plot now possesses her, we can become possessed by her sweet memories of a woman who epitomized will power. She was a strong-willed woman, especially on some days in my childhood. Life got hard for her several times, but her will to do what was right and to be kind, kept her steadfast and content. Mama’s will was always for the common good for everyone she knew. She embodied the term “goodwill”.

Mama’s will changed the nuance of the word itself into the will to live her life thoughtfully and hopefully, in spite of some circumstances that confronted her. A lover of the great game of Rook, she took the cards from the dealer each day and played her hand to the best of her ability. Mama’s will determined that the world would be a better place because she cared about all those people in her daily world. Her will could not be contained by the letter of the law since it was so much lived by the spirit of love.

In her last day or two, Mama’s will to live would morph into her will to die as if it were part of the game of cards she kept getting. With thankful relief, she moved through her final days and hours in the gracious hands and hearts of hopsice caregivers.

When Mama’s will to live and her will to die came together that day, you could almost feel and see the greater will of the Dealer playing itself out at the card table of the moment. While I would never presume to know or want to really know what the will of God might be for us, I can at least hope that God will always love us and hold on to us through thick and thin, in health or in sickness, for richer or poorer, in youth and old age, and especially in our dying day.