An Afternoon with Joyce

This post comes as we wait for the passing of my mother-in-law, Joyce Smiley. Toni is doing regular updates on her blog.

It's quiet now. So much different than just a few moments ago. Some of Jim and Joyce's oldest and dearest friends just got here. When they came in there were smiles and hugs and fresh tears. They call her Joycie. I don't know of any one else who's close enough to call her that. She didn't wake up, but raised her eyes a couple times at the new voices.

It was lunch time, so I told them all to go and I would stay behind. These families have a long history and I wanted to allow them to be together over a meal. Now it's just Joyce and I. I sit by her bed. The room is quiet...just the gentle hum her air mattress...the quiet chirp of a machine dispensing her morphine...the steady rhythm of her slowing breaths.

We talk. I tell her how proud I am of her...how much she has taught me by watching her walk trough this. I tell her I'm honored, and nervous, to preach her funeral. I tell her "thank you" for trusting her youngest daughter to some punk kid. I continue a long argument we've had about animals and the afterlife when I tell her she will have to wait for the new heavens and the new earth before she has her dog. I'm sure she disagrees. I still think I'm right, but I hope I'm wrong.

The memories come fast now. Spaghetti dinners. The ritual of Sunday lunch. Tonka's hips. Her futile attempts to confine the chaos of seven grand kids into one room. The same stories told over and over as if fresh and new. Homemade cleaners that were so much less effective than their purchased counterpart. How she would "accidentally" slap my butt every now and then. How her home became a shelter for the misfit pets of her daughters. Fire cone fireplace starters.

Jim's back now...just before the tears come again.