My mother died on December 27, 2003. This is what I wrote for her memorial:

Mom died last Saturday. I was with her, saw it, felt it…profound, awesome, frightening, wonderful.

I comfort myself by thinking about Mom's dying–and my own, actually–using language filled with metaphors about going home, finding peace, entering the waiting arms of God, rejoining loved ones, finally meeting Jesus face-to-face. These metaphors all express truth. If I were from another tradition, I'd find comfort in other words and expressions, in other ultimately inadequate–just as mine are ultimately inadequate–ways of saying the same thing, of expressing my confidence in what finally is, for me, here and now, unknown and unknowable: It is love that awaits, love beyond definition, love beyond words like heaven and eternal life, love incomprehensible and unspeakable.

Mom is there.

But she didn't just get there; she'd been there awhile. I remember a life filled with discovering and sharing the sacred in the ordinary moments of our everyday life, when Mom embodied God…
…in the way she set the table for dinner night after night.
…in the way she arranged the items in her home that represented her history with her husband and her children.
…in the way she opened her home to friends and the friends of her children.

All of this was sacramental. Each of these was an outward sign of inner truth and grace: every meal a holy communion; every scrape that got washed another baptism and blessing.

She said wordlessly: God is here. God is constant. God loves you, just like this, with arms open–through all the bumps and cuts of childhood, through the broken loneliness of adulthood.

Mom's arms…God's arms. Mom's voice…God's voice. Mom's touch…God's touch. Mom's kiss…God's kiss.

I guess what I'm saying is this: Dad–and I mean no disrespect–you taught me that God is sovereign, powerful, just, judgmental and distant.

But Mom, you taught me that God is tender, immediate, close, comforting. You taught me that, in God's eyes, I'm not a lump of coal to be rescued from the fire, but a diamond, slowly cut and polished.

That process is done for you. And if God, right now, holds us up to the light and smiles at the way in which we reflect and refract the light (and I believe God does), then imagine how brilliantly you must be shining now–rainbows of light splashed across the walls of heaven.

Text and image © 2011 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.