I was walking into Aldi the Thursday before Good Friday when a car entered the parking lot and paused next to me.

The driver—whom I immediately recognized as my mom’s long-time friend Barbara—rolled down her window and called out, “Lois, how are your parents?”

I grimaced.

Just the day before, I had signed hospice paperwork for my mom. Her health had declined steeply during the last several weeks, to the point where she was no longer able to swallow. I had taken her to see the birds in the nursing-home aviary on Tuesday, but she had since become unresponsive.

Needless to say, I had no idea how to answer Barbara’s question.

She quickly read my reaction. “Wait for me inside,” she said and drove off to park.

I got my cart, pushed it into the store and stopped a few feet from the door. This wasn’t the first time I had run into Barbara at Aldi, but it had been a while. She didn’t know that my dad had joined my mom in long-term care several months ago, or about the roller-coaster ride that his health had been since then.

When she got into the store, we stood there by the goldfish crackers and talked for 15 or 20 minutes. I caught her up on what had been going on with both of my parents, and she poured love and wisdom into this hurting daughter as only a woman who has trusted God through her own great loss can do.

She spoke of her cherished friendship with my mom, and of what she learned after her husband died unexpectedly when they were in Hawaii celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary. She talked about feeling guilty because he died while they were snorkeling—an activity she enjoyed but he did not—and how her understanding of God’s sovereignty helped her during that dark season.

She quoted a verse I have long held dear, reminding me of the comforting truth that “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139:16)

Her words ministered peace to my sad and confused heart. I thought of them—and her—often in the days ahead.

Looking back, it was no coincidence I ran into her that day. It was a gift of grace from a loving heavenly Father.

Later that afternoon, the hospice nurse called to update me on my mom’s condition. She might have until Easter, maybe longer, the nurse told me.

The next morning, another nurse called to tell me my mom was in “the active stages of dying,” a process that could take up to eight days. At 8:25 that same night, my mom took her final breath.

Two of my sisters and my dad were with her when she entered eternity. Randy and I had attended a Good Friday service at a nearby church that evening. We had planned to stop by to see them afterwards. If she had hung on for five more minutes, we would have been there too.

My mom was strong, a survivor. After the accident in 2017 that resulted in her moving to long-term care, and following the stroke she suffered on New Year’s Day 2018, medical professionals used words like “miraculous” and “really remarkable healing” when they spoke about her recoveries.

She was a testament to God’s healing power, for sure.

She seemed healthy and robust last December, even as my dad had begun struggling through one health crisis after another. We all fully expected her to outlive him, by many years even.

But God’s timeline for her life didn’t match ours.

In the end, she was like a runner nobody even knew was in the race—much less considered a contender—who snuck past all the frontrunners and made it into heaven first. It makes me smile when I think of it now—she finished well, way ahead of our schedule but right on time for her.

Later that night, after Randy had gone home to tell our girls and the hospice workers had prayed with us and told us what would happen next, I went to my mom’s bedside and touched her briefly on the shoulder.

At the time, I couldn’t comprehend what the next few weeks would be like—how intense my exhaustion would be, how beautiful the funeral would be, how difficult it would be to see my dad struggling, how hard it would be to identify and articulate what I was feeling.

All I knew was one thing, which I told her right before I left the room that night.

“I’ll see you later, Mom.”

♥ Lois

NOTE: This post is part of a collection called Help for Parent Loss. To read more, please click here.