My Mother's First Serious Illness and Her Passing

I was very young, perhaps between five and six years of age when my mother fell seriously ill. "Her temperature increased and stayed at 105 degree Fahrenheit and despite everything the doctor tried she became weaker and weaker." Finally, the doctor, defeated in his efforts, said there was nothing more he could do for her and left.

All the family were gathered around her in her bedroom. "My father and my mother's four brothers and three sisters in the room and my younger brother and I looking in from the doorway." Sensing that it was near the end, one of her brothers remembered a holy man, a Russian monk who lived in a monastery in Pennsylvania. "The family decided as a last resort, to bring him to our small home in New Jersey." My brother and I were taken along on the drive and had to memorize a greeting over and over so we should not forget it when we met him. "His name was Father Afanasy." We had to say, "Здравствуйте" - pronounced "ZDRAVST-vwee-tye" which is the formal greeting for 'Hello' and means literally, 'Be Healthy', followed by Ochets (Father) Afanasy.

When he walked into our home and I looked up at him, I saw a tall man and still today recall that he had a deep peace about him. "I remember that his black robes seemed none too clean but he walked with great dignity and silence that even though I was a child I felt he was someone very special.

My mother's family was very emotional and were constantly crying as they prayed. "When Father Afanasy walked into the bedroom he was holding a small dish of 'Holy Water' in his left hand." He approached my mother and dipped his right hand into the water and threw the water three times in my mother's face.

Immediately after the third time she rose up quickly from her bed, looked around her and said 'Oh, you are all here. "I will go into the kitchen and make something for you as you must be hungry." This was my first and one of the most powerful miracles in a life filled with the miraculous.

Years later my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and although the breast was removed the cancer spread rapidly throughout her body. "She was once a heavy set woman and now became very thin." As her last days approached my aunt called me at my apartment in New York City and asked me to come to our home in New Jersey as there w sot much time left.

Now, my mother knew that she was dying and gave specific instructions that she was to die in her home, in the living room and not be taken to a hospital. "She also gave the exact details as to the type of coffin she wanted, draped with blue silk." She specified that she would be buried in her pink dress which would go nicely with the blue. "Further, she wanted her gravestone to have a picture of a red cardinal (her favourite bird) and a spray of dogwood blossoms (her favourite flower) and would be buried in the family plot at St. Tikhon's Monastery where Father Afanasy has lived more than fifty years ago.

When I arrived home she had only a few days to live. "I greeted her, saying that I was in the area and wanted to see her." To this she replied, 'baloney', an Americanism for 'nonsense' as she knew quite well why I had come.

Her pain was excruciating and only Demerol seem to ease her suffering. "Although the doctor said she was to be given an injection eight hours apart and not more frequently, my father told him on the phone that he would give her the Demerol as often as she needed it to ease her suffering and put the phone down." However, by this time my father was so emotionally distraught and my aunts incapable of doing anything but weep, my father said to me, "You must give your mother the injections." "Whenever the pain became intolerable I then gave her the Demerol."

Now I must admit that my mother was a very difficult person, always arguing and fighting with my father, narrow-minded, petty and possessive, so much so that on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, when she was ranting at my father, "I quietly walked out of the house and went alone to New York City." I could not take any more of their bickering.

The day of my mother's passing was fast approaching and the pain that made her cry out was increasing despite the Demerol injections. "I was giving her oxygen when suddenly her body became completely immobile and her breathing slowed." Even before this, she was unable to move and was virtually rigid lying on her left side facing me. "Then I witnessed something so extraordinary I have never seen again." My father was opposite me on my mother's right side. "Slowly she turned to him and smiled at him with such love as I had never seen from her before, a love that washed away all the bitterness of the past and blessed my father with her final breath." Then she died. "As I shut off the oxygen tank her sisters were weeping uncontrollably, my father stoic, but broken.

And then two more miracles occurred. "Seconds after her last breath a peace descended into the room." It was so powerful that her sisters immediately stopped crying and we all became immersed in it, the 'peace that passeth all understanding'. "We remained motionless, silent, concentrated, when in that stillness a perfume came into the room, a fragrance more wonderful that all the flowers I have known these many years, a fragrance that spoke to me of the passing of an ancient soul who had come to earth to work out certain things from past births." It would be impossible for me to attempt to describe this heavenly perfume that we breathed for more than half an hour, silent in the peace and stillness of the room.

I said to myself that this was a great soul who in passing blessed us so beautifully – and I had seen throughout my life only the exterior covering. "I vowed that I would never again judge a person unless I could see their soul and then there would be no need to judge as we all are on the same path to divinity and it matters little what we seem to be or have achieved, but what we become."

Narad