My mother once looked at me with troubled eyes and said, “Howard, I’ve lost Howard Dale.”
At first, I did not understand. Then it came to me. She did not know who I was. She thought she was speaking to my uncle Howard and searching for her son.
The moment startled me. Without thinking, I answered too quickly. “Mom, you’re scaring me. I am Howard Dale.”
Late in 1996, doctors diagnosed my mother with terminal lung cancer. She waited several months before telling me. When she finally did, my wife Rita and I left Louisiana and returned home to East Texas.
The next morning, before we could even begin planning, a phone call came. My mother had been in a car accident near Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was in the hospital with head injuries.
After two difficult weeks, we brought her home to Texas to stay with us.
As we crossed back into East Texas, she looked at me and said, “We need to turn around and go home.”
I gently told her she would stay with us for a while. She said nothing more, but I could sense her uneasiness. Much of the time, she believed she was somewhere else entirely.
She lived with us for the next five months.
Hospice care helped ease her pain, though the doctors struggled at times to balance the medication. Some moments were heartbreaking. Others carried an unexpected touch of humor.
As a boy, I had known my mother as the one who cared for me. Now the roles had changed, and there was little I could do except be present, help where I could, and love her through those final days.
When my work required travel, Rita cared for her faithfully. My mother was usually peaceful, though confusion sometimes overtook her. Yet most days were quiet.
On one business trip, we took her with us to Galveston and stayed a few days by the sea. We laughed together and enjoyed the breeze. It remains one of those bright memories that shine through a darker season.
Those five months were some of the best times I remember having with her.
After she passed away, Rita and I found the beginning of a letter she had written to a close friend in Oklahoma.
Then she wrote words I have never forgotten:
I love my Lord Jesus and will live for Him forever.
Those words gave me comfort.
Illness had taken much from her. Memory had become uncertain. Yet faith still lived within her heart.
I do not pretend to know every mystery of another soul. That belongs to God alone. But I know this: in her final days, hope was present.
She found comfort in Scripture. There was a childlike trust about her that had not always been visible in stronger years.
Hope had settled where fear might have lived.
That hope brought joy.
When I remember those months now, sorrow still visits from time to time. But it does not come alone. It walks beside gratitude.
I am thankful her pain was eased. I am thankful for the unexpected moments of laughter. I am thankful for the glimpses of peace that blossomed near the end.
And I am thankful that even in weakness, hope remained.
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