Monday, February 20, 2012 & Tuesday February 21, 2012

Ecclesiastes 3:4

Although I lost both my parents two years ago – they died within a few months of each other – I remember the circumstances surrounding my mother’s death more vividly, because they were unusual and striking.

When my mother was rushed to the hospital one evening, before entering the ambulance I paused to grab my black tote bag, which hangs in the corner in the front hall. It contains my Walkman and several of Curtis Stiegers’s tapes. I had the feeling that I would be needing to listen to his music that night.

All night long, as doctors worked over my mother, who had had a stroke, I listened to my Stiegers’ tapes in the hospital waiting room. Kind nurses brought me coffee from time to time and offered me their company, but the solace I sought was from Stiegers’ music. Early in the morning, the battery in the Walkman must have run out, because the music suddenly came to an abrupt halt. Startled out of my anesthetized state, I automatically glanced down at my watch and was surprised to note that it was 4:41 a.m. The night had passed more swiftly than I had ever imagined possible, and I got up to check on my mother’s condition. As I walked towards the nurse’s station, I saw a body draped with a sheet being wheeled out of a room. It was my mother.

When I received the death certificate, I saw to my shock that the time of death had been 4:41 a.m. Exactly the time that my Walkman battery had run out and the music had stopped.

Ellen Palmer

Comment:

The book of Ecclesiastes says: “there is a time to weep and a time to dance.”
There are moments in our lives when we have to embrace either the music or the tears. Since it was no longer appropriate for Ellen to listen to beautiful music, it stopped playing. The time to mourn the death of her mother had arrived, as the Lord revealed to her through a miraculous sign that eased her pain.

Fr. Hugh Duffy