Maw-Maw died yesterday.

Hi Gary and Chhavi,

Mamasan is calling you Chhavi, but I didn’t know how to call you Gary, but Mawmaw died today at 2:12pm local time, Wednesday, October 10, 2001. She will be cremated and there will be a memorial service for her in Belair Methodist Church this Saturday, October 13. We will leave Friday morning for South Carolina to meet with family and friends.

Mom (Mamasan) and Uncle Nelson are taking it rather well — they had 10 days to prepare for the inevitable — but it was still not easy.

We will be around the house here until Friday morning with the usual going and coming throughout the day. We have to remove all of Mawmaw stuff some time within the next week or so.

If you can email me a phone number, or Chhavi, since you speak polish, maybe you could call before this email arrives to Gary. Lots to do. . .later. . .love you both. . .

In response, I wrote:

Mom and Dad,

I really don’t know what to say. I honestly wasn’t expecting this at all. You were saying there was a 50/50 chance, but I guess I read that as more like 70/30 or something. So I really don’t know what to say. I’m in a bit of shock, though from the message’s subject I got an ominous feeling.

I wish I could be there with everyone — hugs and kisses should be flowing a plenty, and i wish i was there to give and receive them.

I hope you’re doing okay, Mom. I don’t know what else to say. Except that I love you, of course.

I’ll write more tomorrow. Give my love and sympathy to everyone.

It really did come as a surprise to me, and it makes me feel a little stupid for the email I sent recently, in which I expressed sympathy for Maw-Maw for about thirty words, then ranted and raved about the stupidity of American actions for another seven hundred. Dad hasn’t responded to that, and given the circumstances, I doubt he ever will. And I don’t know that I really want him to.

I lay in bed last night thinking of Maw-Maw’s expectations of her death, of what she anticipated to be afterwards. I don’t know that she ever really talked to anyone about it, but the general consensus seemed to be that she felt she would be punished for something she did. Of course everyone now is saying, “She’s in heaven. She’s better off where she is now.” Aunt Mae and Nelson, of course, are saying this, and I would say given the changes within the WCG, Mom is saying the same thing. There’s comfort in everyone saying the same thing, everyone comforting everyone else with similar words. Now’s a good time for everyone to validate everyone else’s worldview concerning death and what follows. I guess it’s also called sympathy.

At any rate, it got me to thinking that Maw-Maw, if she was still a Christian (and I’m fairly certain she was — I don’t think she cursed God or anything at the end of her life), and she was right (i.e., her beliefs about death after life were correct), she now knows that her faith was not misplaced. However, if she’s wrong, she doesn’t know. Well, that only holds if she was wrong that there was death after life. If, of course, there’s nothing after death, everyone is ultimately unaware of whether or not the worldview they had on earth was correct. Therefore, only theists get validation of their worldviews at death, and only if they’re right. Further, if I’m right in concurring that “when we die, we rot,” I’ll never really know. Strange — possibly one of the most important question/answers in life, and if I am right, I’ll never know if I was right.

Back to Maw-Maw’s death: I’m sure Mom is taking this hard. Dad said that she was prepared for it, with ten days of expectation behind her, but she was probably like me — not really believing the prognosis. Of course I didn’t see Maw-Maw personally, so that might have changed my views.

She’s probably the closest person to me personally to die in fifteen years, since Paw-Paw died about fifteen years ago. And she’s not even that close to me, as I indicated earlier. I tried to put myself in Mom’s position, and it was utterly inconceivable. I’ve no idea what that must be like, to lose your mother. Dad’s already been through it, so at least he has a good idea of the emotions Mom’s feeling.

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I talked to my folks for a while, obviously about two things primarily. First we of course talked about Maw-Maw1 and her death. It turns out that Mom, Dad, Nelson, and LaVerne were all there when she died. She was putting up a good fight until Mom whispered to her, “You don’t have to fight, Mom.” Dad told me about that and stopped short — they were on speaker phone and Mom had started crying at that. Overall, though, Mom sounds in good spirits. She told me that earlier this year she’d come to the opinion that Maw-Maw wouldn’t last through this year, and it’s seemed inevitable the last few days as well. Everyone has had time to prepare, I guess. It was strange, though, how Mom and Dad seemed to idealize the memory. It seemed positively idyllic, and I guess that’s how people want to remember someone’s last moments.