Finding Joy

 

One of the things for which I am profoundly grateful is the joy which radiated from my mother in her last years and in her last hours. To speak of joy as someone dies in the ICU with struggling breath and beeping wires might seem at best dissonant and at worst irreverent; yet I think it is theological irony. I believe, perhaps because I need to, that God calls us to a perfect joy in perfect love and freedom and to experience or glimpse that at a loved one’s death is simply grace and blessing.

None of this wipes out or even diminishes the pain of grief; it is excruciating! But it does lay that exquisite grace alongside or at the crevices. I gave my mother a copy of the Book of Joy a few years ago and I was thrilled that she “enjoyed” it. It not only gave us something more to share and discuss but also provided a wisdom space into which she was leaning. Early in the book Bishop Tutu describes a discipline which he tries to employ, namely upon feeling anger, trying to remember there is somewhere something to really be angry about, someone who is truly experiencing an injustice. Mom was like that always and only later in life began to realize the joy which comes from that compassion. Perhaps her entire life was a response to God’s call to holy joy and I am consoled that she is that joy now.