When Death Knocks on the Doorstep
On April 4, 2025, I held my mom's hand, kissed her forehead, and told her I loved her. Except she didn't know who I was. The dementia took over her mind, and I saw the toll of the other health issues wrecking her physical body. I walked out of her room at that assisted living facility, sat in my rental car, and cried. Not because I thought it would be the last time I'd see her or talk to her, but because in some real way the goodbye had already happened and I wasn’t ready for it.
Well last week I got the call. My mom died on the afternoon of Thursday, June 18th, alone in a room in an assisted living facility, days shy of her 66th birthday. And when the call came from my brother, I felt heartbreak and sadness, but the heartbreak and sadness were mixed with relief because her suffering was over. The dementia, the diabetes, the depression, the heart problems, the long slow unraveling. All of it ended in a moment and she was with Jesus her Savior. And while her suffering ended, a different kind of pain began for me and my siblings.
I've seen plenty of death in my life, but I've never lost a parent. I don't exactly know how to do this. And if I’m being honest, there has been a tendency in my life, that when I encounter pain or negative emotions, I often try to avoid it, push it down, or push through it, and over the past few days, I’ve been tempted to do that. But I don’t want to be that man, so the best way that I know how to process this is to write through it, because writing helps me to figure out what I'm thinking.
My Mom
Let me be honest about my mom.
When I was a kid, she was a great mom. She stayed home and raised me and my three siblings. She cooked, cleaned, and made each of our houses a home. She homeschooled us before deciding the load was too much. She loved us.
I don't have bad memories of her from those years. I have memories of being loved, of being taken care of, of being paid attention to. That's the mom I remember from those years.
In 1999, when I was a junior in high school, my parents separated, and from that point forward, her life slowly came apart. There were bad relationships, addictions, health problems she didn't take care of, hospital visits that should have been wake-up calls but weren't. There was homelessness. There were years where my siblings and I tried to help, moving her from Wisconsin to Connecticut (then back to Wisconsin), getting her into housing, hoping each new start would be the one that took. Some of these things helped in the short term, but none of them seemed to last very long. Her last years were spent moving through the healthcare system, her body and mind giving out at the same time, and she died on a Thursday afternoon, alone, in a room in West Bend, Wisconsin.
I don't share any of those things about her life to tarnish her legacy. I share these things because that is the actual story, and the lesson of her life is hidden in the space between who she was and who she became. I won’t sugarcoat the fact that the relationship with my mom over the past 27 years has been complicated and full of heartache and unfulfilled expectations. But it was also mixed with seasons of love, laughter, and home cooked meals.
And both of those things are true.
Life isn’t a neat little box that can be summed up in an essay or an obituary. Our lives are a tapestry of events, decisions, and experiences that, over the course of time, tell a story. And it's a story that speaks to more than just the experiences of my mom, because the reality is that the slow undoing of a life doesn't only happen to people with addictions, bad relationship choices, and health issues. It happens to anyone who stops paying attention. It happens inch by inch and day by day, through choices that don't look like they matter, until they all add up to a life’s story.
When Grief Moves In
So what do I do now? What do any of us do when death knocks on the doorstep and grief moves in?
Here is what I am learning in real time, even as the news of my mom’s passing is still fresh enough to make my chest tight and the tears flow.
The first lesson is that grief and pain are not enemies to be defeated, they are teachers to be sat with. My natural instinct with past losses has been to put on a strong face, push down the pain, and move past it. That's probably not unique to me, as most of us have built strategies for keeping pain at arm's length. The problem is that when we refuse to sit with grief, we refuse to learn what grief has to teach us. We end up moving on without processing the season of grief and the associated heartbreak. And we think that the season passes, but in reality, it just goes to a deeper part inside of us.
So I'm sitting with it. The sadness, the regret over conversations I never had, the frustrations, the gratitude for the mom I had as a kid, the heaviness of knowing I won't see her again on this side of eternity. All of it. Not because sitting with grief is enjoyable, but because pretending I'm fine would be a lie. I know the grief and pain will dissipate with time. But I also know I'll learn things about myself and others in this season that I wouldn't have learned any other way. So while I’m not going to let the grief control me, I’m also not going to rush through it.
The second lesson is one I have written about before, but this last week has made it real in a way that words never could. Memento mori. Remember that you will die. It's an ancient practice, and for good reason. When death is theoretical, it's easy to live as though we have unlimited time, but when death is sitting with you in the here and now, you start to look at your days differently. The unimportant things shrink, and the things that actually matter come into focus.
What death is teaching me, right now, in the middle of the grief, is that today is a gift and it actually matters. Not in some abstract motivational sense, but in a concrete way. The way I treat my wife, daughter, coworkers, and anyone else I meet today matters. The time I spend with my daughter later today matters. The phone calls I make to my siblings in the coming weeks matter. The work I do, the words I say, the things I put off, the things I prioritize. All of it matters, even when I don't feel the importance of the mundane and the day-to-day grind, and I’m reminded more of the importance of today, knowing that there will be a “last time” for each of us.
The Question Waiting at Every Funeral
There is a hard question waiting at the end of every funeral, and even though death is a great opportunity for reflection, there can be a tendency to ignore it. So I'll ask it for you and me.
What relationships do you need to steward better? What habits do you need to start or stop? What changes do you know you need to make, but are still putting off to ‘someday’?
That question isn't abstract. It has a name. It has a face. It has a phone number. It has a date on the calendar that you have not yet circled. Death is going to come for you and me, and for the people we love, on a timeline none of us control. The only thing we control is what we do with the day we have been given. Today.
A Note To My Mom (and to the Rest of Us)
Mom, I wish I had one more opportunity to say this to you, but thank you for being my mom. Thank you for bringing me into this world and for loving me. Thank you for the memories, for the laughs, and for the years of my childhood that live fondly in my mind. And thank you for the harder years too, because even those have taught me things I wouldn’t have learned any other way. I love you and I miss you, and I know that one day I will see you again.
My message to the rest of us still here: don't waste this life. Don't waste today. The people you love aren't promised tomorrow, and neither are you. So live like it matters. Because it does.
