Then I think of the events leading up to my mother’s death, I see the
great kindness of God toward us both, and I feel all better.

It began with something going wrong. God things often do, I’ve
noticed. I had been caring for my mother, Dorothy Glidewell, for
thirteen years, since she had a major stroke in 1988. The stroke took
her ability to move her right side and to speak, except for “yes” and
“no.”

During the last five years of her life she never left her bed. And she
never had a bedsore.

I was proud of that.

And then she got one, in her heel, and it wouldn’t heal. I propped it
up, tried all sorts of ointments, and it just got worse. I had to ask
for help from the Visiting Nurse Association, whose nurses began
coming by twice a week. I could never have made it heal, they said.
Healing would take six weeks of special medication.

Oddly enough, this was the first God thing. Because I was going to
need the calm reassurance of those visiting nurses in the days to
come.

Late in that April of 2003, my brother David drove from Montana to
Virginia for what became his last visit. As soon as Mother heard he
was on his way, she began to glow with happiness, and she kept that
glow throughout his visit.

Only hours after he left, she apparently had a small stroke, which
took her ability to feed herself with a spoon. She began sleeping
ninety percent of the time, as she had done after her stroke in 1988,
one reason I decided she’d had another.

This began a series of events, which I believe were small strokes,
each of which took something. Soon she forgot how to chew and could
only have soft food. And, oddly enough, that

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