Grace is a Wonderful Thing

The sun rose over the world this morning and for the first time in over 96 years, it rose on a world without my father. Pop, as he was always called by everyone except his grandchildren, who called him Papa Stone, was a two-time hospice survivor.

In theory, no one should survive a hospice. It is where one goes to die. Yet he returned twice, once in 2003 and again in January of this year. Such events define his life. He was a different drummer on the road less taken.

His last few months were filled with many sleepy times. During some of these periods he seemed to be not completely "present." This is sometimes referred to as traveling, but unlike an intentional attempt to achieve spiritual enlightenment via astral projection, this 'traveling' is more like a sorting of old memories to find validation. I do not think that it is traveling as much as it is preparation for a journey. During these times, a person is likely to 'talk it out' with himself.

That is the setting for the story I am about to tell, but first, a bit more background information is needed. For most of my life, I have had no clue as to whether he had accepted Jesus as his personal savior, the defining element of being saved. His sister said that he had gone forward at an altar call when he was 17, and he had certainly been active in a church when he met and married my mom. But all of that was before my time. By the time that I was old enough to have clear memories, my mother's Baptist background had found my dad's Presbyterian Church somewhat lacking. After a counseling session with her old Baptist pastor, mom picked out a "compromise" denomination for the family. Ultimately, she ended up taking us kids to church by herself, because as soon as we became a two-car family, my dad spent Sunday mornings visiting his (by then) mostly bedridden mother.

It was a complex situation, but the salient point is that communication had broken down, and no one knew exactly what my dad thought when it came to spiritual issues. Fast forward to last month:

My dad's caretaker was fixing a meal in the kitchen when she heard my dad talking in another room. She went in to where he was sitting. His eyes were closed, so she rubbed his forearm to bring him back to the present. He opened his eyes, looked straight at her, and said, "Grace is a wonderful thing." She could scarcely believe that she had heard him correctly and asked him to repeat it. Whereupon he said, "Grace is a wonderful thing, isn't it?"

From that point on, she said, the "traveling" stopped. The day he died, he awoke alert, ate a big breakfast, showered, dressed, and began a good day. Then his breathing became shallower and shallower. The visiting home nurse who had seen him that morning was surprised that he passed on that afternoon.

He left us with his belief that grace is a wonderful thing.



This photo was taken by Ed Rybczynski at sunrise on 27 Aug 2011, the last day of Pop's earthly life. I find it a perfect statement of passage.

[used by permission — Mr. Rybcznski is documenting a year of sunrises at http://www.edrybczynski.com/page1]