Oh, mom, remember that the last eight months of your fight with breast cancer I began to call you several times a week from Sioux Falls? Each time I told you how much our little family loved you. Sometimes Little Laurel Would speak with grandma. Then I called every day at the risk of loss of money and against the wishes of others. Very occasionally, and though I was not a believer, fake it until you make it, I always told you how much God loved you, and I told you how I was doing with AA, I told you about my teaching at National, and so many of our students knew of your cancer. We all prayed for you, and when I was hired by Southeast Technical Institute, a successful application, I shared my joy with you. Though at first, I was too strict, I became an excellent and understanding teacher. At that point, I saw you slipping, I drove each weekend to your hospital bed, even bringing Laurel to see grandma. Then my wife came, my best friend and I drove, the three of us the more than 325 miles to your bedside to be with you and Don your husband and told you, reminded you, of the great love we had for you, and sometimes my brother was there, always his wife was there. Our little daughter stood beside you thought she was frightened for grandma, though My Wife, my daughter came at risk, my wife from a very demanding job, my daughter from 5th grade, and me from teaching, we stood by you with the greatest love, just as Captain Kirk commanded the great Starship Enterprise, with positive courage, with wonderful and freeing ways with the difficult end awareness of mindfulness, we were there for you as you lay there in Methodist Hospital and eventually at Kavanaugh House Hospice WE were there for you. Even in the face of difficult and consistent resolve, we recognized your resolution your huge difference between pain and suffering. And, when you began to falter, we were there for you with ultimate mindfulness. In the last week of life, we left school and jobs, we came for that last week of struggle, and all the while we were there at full support for Donald your husband, and we called in Don’s mother’s Methodist minister, though the fight was rattling our spiritual resolve with you even praying in infinite recognition. We were ready when the end was close, even remembering the gifts we gave you, and the Black Hills gold pin I gave you which you wore in the end. We brought in aunt Ruthy, your sister who witnessed your last breath; that powerful last night, you and I made a final peace with you in your ultimate pain walking around the bed to look into my eyes with the full resolution between you and me. I wondered how the earth still moved, and I could not cry as every star took its place. And seventeen years later I went quietly into our bedroom, closed the door, and wept for more than an hour remembering your life, your struggle, and then the end as we finally came together with resolution. You were there for that final grief and in this final reaction, as with my own pain as I revisited your God asking forgiveness. My sweet mother I believe now you are here for me, as I remember the day of your death and White House AA came for me with more than forty AA members helping me out of the possibility of drink; we left that possibility as the AA mindfulness through God our Higher Power came for me in your hometown to help me out of a depressed mindset. Wheather I liked it or not I was in full resolution. At your funeral that Methodist, United Methodist minister, preached from the book of John, of your salvation and deliverance into Eternity at the present moment of our pain changing; I actually accepted the law of impermanence some seventeen years later after I myself had felt the full need for God in the name of Jesus himself. my full brush with death four months before as I lay in ICU praying, “Every Hour I Need Thee,” I had finally found God through the struggle with anger came seven years later for my resolution in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with my doctoral Christian therapist who is only now teaching me the fiction of anger, and my freedom to accept that my fiction such that my story of anger I can rewrite in my own mind even for the briefest moment as I am already on my way toward a new relationship with physical pain. You had fully attempted to teach me that in that last look into my eyes, and now in July 2018, I am on my way toward letting go of the pain that physical and mental pain let go. With a working deffinition of mindfulness, I return to meditate with God, I’m in and have begun to rebuild my understanding of love to wife, daughter and all where I must begin by giving them space of acceptance. You did teach me that as you looked into my eyes and we did not touch, and acceptance of what I hated, I began never to escape from a moment of pain, and I could reach out for God and not need to suffer the way of mindfulness reaching out for what is advertised, not being defeated by what the pain has to teach me, the full acceptance of what life has to offer me pleasant or unpleasant no greediness or hatred, non=judgemental as what I have to reach into myself. And, there is with me as with every Christian, what God has to offer, what medicine cannot fix, but that even my pain might change as I refuse to lock myself into stagnant refusal in the Hospital or at home. And, for me the Lord can take my hand as He lingers here, as your light was almost gone, and now in which I know that what you had to teach me at the end was faith as the Lord took your hand to lead you home and full acceptance of what pain has to teach us all, an inner strength.
Charles E Taylor
