My mother died seven years ago this month just three months short of her ninety-first birthday. She lived in her home and drove other ladies to church until she was eighty-nine. Mom lived a long, joyful life in spite of smoking unfiltered camels for fifty years and having diabetes for  over forty years. When I wonder how she lived so long and so well, I think of three things, faith, hard work and laughter.

Mom would be furious that I am telling the world she smoked. She started during World War II along with many others. She hated it, was embarrassed by it, and always said she couldn’t stop, but when she was seventy she did. She believed God delivered her from the need to smoke, felt like she should witness to that deliverance, but was ashamed to admit that she smoked. Since it is such a witness to her faith, I believe she will forgive me for telling.

Mom worked hard all of her life. Many of her jobs were physically demanding. Some were just stressful. None were very fulfilling until in her senior years, she became a foster grandmother and assisted the special education teachers at the local elementary school. She loved the children, the teachers, and that job and she worked until she was well into her eighties.

Mom loved to laugh. She was just as happy being on the receiving end of a joke as she was playing a joke on others. Even in her last year as her memory failed, she loved that commercial on TV where smart was pronounced “schmart.” She would pronounce the word that way any time she needed to use it and then smile.

Faith, hard work, and laughter, these three but the greatest of these is faith.

“They didn’t tell you down there, did they?”

“Tell me what, Daddy?”

“That I died.”

I had this conversation with my father on Wednesday, November 6, 1985. The previous Saturday evening, he had developed severe chest pain  and my mother brought him to the hospital. Both he and my mother thought he was having a heart attack. The doctors did not. He had lung cancer, severe chronic lung disease, and fluid in his chest, plenty of other reasons for chest pain. The doctors did admit him to the hospital early Sunday morning. When I got to the hospital, he moved in bed, anxious, short of breath, restless, and inconsolable. I have never felt more helpless.

The next afternoon while he was in the X-ray department lying on a stretcher, he suffered a cardiac arrest. An X-ray technician saw him collapse and hit him in the chest. His heart started; he breathed, and he woke up. What is remarkable about this story is the change in him. He lay flat of his back, quiet, and serene. He breathed easily, never more calm and at peace.

The doctors called my mother, brother, and me for a conference. Did we want him to be resuscitated if this happened again? With his cancer and other problems, we agreed the answer was no. My brother, seeing the change in our father, asked me what had happened to him. My answer: he saw what death is like and it is okay. Two days later, my father confirmed that answer by the above conversation.

“Well Daddy, you haven’t died; you are still here with us.” No response. “Did you get a glimpse of what it is like?” He nodded, yes. “What’s it like?”

“I saw a bright light.” A faint smile crossed his face, and he said nothing else. I had read about life after life experiences, but I was certain my father had not. He was not a reader.

During the next two days he lay quietly, breathing easily, recognizing people, saying appropriate things, but always with a sort of glow about him and an other-worldly calm.

On Friday evening, he died.

Both non-believers and Christian ministers have scoffed at this story, but it began my real spiritual journey. I grew up going to church, learning the basics of Christianity, becoming more judgmental than loving. Then I grew away. I worked all the time, didn’t stop believing but came to believe that my faith was not relevant to everyday life. Now feeling helpless and grieving, I saw that nothing was more relevant. I knew I had to figure out what I believed and live my life accordingly. Whether or not people scoffed at the story, my family knew that we had been given a gift. My brother and I knew that our father was at peace; he was at peace before he died and because he died.