A woman wrote to me recently about the death of her mother, which she described as a “beautiful experience”—but one that many people had a hard time understanding.
When the woman’s mother went into the hospital, she asked her to pray that God would take her home to heaven with him. Within a few days her mother began to describe beautiful colors and things she knew no one else in the room could see. Then, the night before she died, she began to see many people she had known in her life who had gone before her. She called out to them by name and seemed so excited to see them all.
She asked if her daughter would come right away if she called her in the middle of the night; of course she said yes. It seems the woman’s mother did just that, but the patient in the next bed said the nurse simply gave her a shot and she went back to sleep. As a hospice nurse, this makes my heart hurt, as it simply would never happen that way while a person was under hospice care.
The Lord awakened the woman early the next morning and she hurried to the hospital, where she was encouraged by the nurse to try to awaken her mother from her deep sleep. She refused, knowing how much her mother wanted to go on to God and not wanting to disturb her journey home to him.
As the day progressed, she told her mother how much she loved her, how grateful she was to her for so many things, and assured her that she would be fine and would see her again one day. She explained it as the “best and worst time of my life.” As her mother died peacefully, surrounded by her family and friends, the daughter praised God for his goodness in taking her to heaven.
Not even her pastor or doctor could understand the faith that allowed her to give her mother back to the God she knew she longed to see. The woman said she will always be grateful for the relationship she and her mother shared in the Lord. She has a very peaceful heart because of it.
Trudy gets so many questions and stories of end-of-life experiences from Guideposts readers, we decided to make her responses a regular feature on her blog. If you have a story about a “glimpse of heaven,” please share it with us. Send it to glimpsesofheaven@guideposts.org.
