By Dr. John E. Morgan

Pastor–Collinsville Baptist Church

My wife’s mother died yesterday.

We had been warned that this was coming.  She was a hospice patient.

Does that word hospice scare you?  I stayed a couple of times in a monastery guest house.  It was called a hospice. A place of hospitality.  But that is not what most of think when we hear the word hospice.

Several years back my sister called me to let me know that my mother was going in a hospice.  To die.  She would be there for a week before she did die.  Most people now think a hospice = death. Hospices help to ease the pain at the end of life.

My mother-in-law, who everybody called Granny, was a hospice patient.  We learned the medical definition of a hospice patient is someone who a doctor feels is within six months of death.   So a doctor told Granny and all of us that she was within six months of death.  Several times.

Granny was first told she had six months or less to live about twenty-five years ago.  That doctor was wrong.  She beat the cancer that was threatening her.  By the medical care of Mayo Clinic.  And the care of her children.  And her unbelievable strength.  And, she would tell you, it was the Lord.  And she did testify to that over and over.

Years went by.  She got a terrible infection.  It did not look like she would make it.  But she did.

About two and a half years ago, a doctor told her she had less than six months.  He was the first one to say she was a hospice patient.  He was wrong.  She got better.  The hospice had to tell her she could not be treated there anymore.

And one last time a doctor told her she was a hospice patient.  He was wrong.  She made it about eight months not six. She went to the hospice facility last Friday.  And she died yesterday (Tuesday).

She spent much of her time these last years at our house.  She could not get around without help.  But she would sit and read her Bible.  Or watch Christian TV.  Or sing hymns with my wife or anyone else.  She loved church.  She loved singing and music.  And she loved her family.  How she cherished her three children.  But even more her grandchildren.  And little pleased her more than being with her great grandchildren.  On January 6, she celebrated her 96th birthday with family and friends.

She did not spend much time thinking about being a hospice patient.  She did think a lot about Jesus.  After all, Jesus had allowed her to make a lot of doctors look silly.

Last Friday, January 15, she left our house to go to Shepherd’s Cove Hospice whose workers had been helping her at our house for months.  We thought Granny would be back here at home.  But she will not be.  Instead, she has truly gone home.

Granny was a hospice patient.  But she never will be again.  Yesterday she died.  Yesterday she left death and pain behind her.

Would it scare you if a doctor told you that you had become a hospice patient? You are.  We all are.  For most of us it is death will not come in the next six months.  But for all of us it is coming.  Death.  You are a hospice patient.

That does not scare Christians.  We know what comes next.  It is all in His hands.  It is something to be excited about.  Granny knows a joy none of us has ever known.  But we will.

Paul, near the end of his life, said, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain…My desire is to depart and be with Christ.”  Philippians 1:21, 21

Granny is departed.  She did it.  Hallelujah.