In the Twinkling of an Eye

Can we even begin to imagine what it must have been like to watch the Lord Jesus ascend into the clouds after addressing His disciples on the Mount of Olives? And when He promised to return in like manner, He defined the template for the Church's blessed hope, as Titus reminds us. And when we realize that His Return is the climax of human history, it is only fitting that we should understand what that Return entails. Our Lord will come with clouds, but do we realize that we are the clouds? The great cloud of witnesses spoken of in Hebrews 12 is indicative of the entourage which will accompany our Lord when He pierces the great darkness of the sky, as foretold in Matthew 24. That we should be caught up in those clouds in the brightness of His Coming--as a radiant Bride with her train sweeping to meet her Groom--is the most breathtaking thought imaginable.

It occurred to me just this week that I have actually participated in a harpazo. I have written of this event in a short story of my mother's passing that I entitled, "A Christmas Gift." She died one week before Christmas, and hers remains the first and only death I have watched. I no longer fear death, if I did--but I think we all do until the Lord delivers us from this fear--and I could not regard her death with anything but pure rapture after what I witnessed, even though nine and one-half years later, I still miss her with all my heart. What this event has taught me is that the Lord times everything perfectly, down to the second. If I thought I knew that before, now I really know it.

My story goes like this. My mother had overcome a terrible health crisis three years before her death. Following an otherwise successful aortic valve replacement surgery, she experienced three cardiac arrests in one week--one happening right in front of me in the hospital, and the other two forcing a full code. She was down for about fifteen minutes each in those last two, within the space of one hour. The medical team's life-saving CPR on her days'-old incision broke several ribs and caused a huge hematoma to develop on her liver, threatening deadly hemorrhage and sending her into a tailspin that took eight months to resolve.

Her doctor announced that she was in stage four congestive heart failure with one of the weakest hearts he had seen. No one--not even our prayer warrior friends--thought my mother would ever get out of bed. No one, that is, except her soulmate--my father--and her daughter--me. We knew my mother. And we knew her God.

Three years later--after she had made a near-full recovery without brain damage at age 84, which describes a mere fraction of the population--she went down without warning and was gone within a week. Her three-year-old aortic valve had developed a major blood clot, and a deadly stroke seemed imminent. Rather than have doctors do anything more to--rather than for--her, she chose Hospice. And Hospice Home became the beautiful and idyllic scene of her death. Idyllic because a December fog rolled in the night of her passing, and it began to snow those big fairytale flakes that make you homesick in your gut for all the dreams adulthood has left behind. It was a magical night, as if heaven's ceiling dropped confetti into the outdoor spotlights hugging the fog outside the glass doors of her room.

Hospice had been careful to point out the stages of death's transition, and my sister and I had brought a small cooler and blankets to wait out each one. Eighteen hours passed while my mother drifted far out to the brim of that other world. In that sequestered sanctuary tucked inside a wintry weekend, we sang, we prayed, we read Scripture, we planned her funeral with her favorite songs, we talked to her, we kissed her moist brow, we stroked her cheeks, and we waited with eager dread for the inevitable. Not once did she open her eyes, but she knew we were there.

The Hospice nurse had told us that some parents want their children to be near them when they die, and some want to be alone--and that we would know. I couldn't imagine how this was possible, but as we waited on either side of her bed throughout the night and into the small hours of morning, we listened to her shockingly loud gasps for air--the death rattle--which the Hospice nurse assured us was painless, despite her hunger. Then, about halfway through our vigil, the nurse discovered that my mother had gone into A-fib, making that devastating stroke a near-certainty.

Between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m., the vigil became surreal. My sister and I left the room and ventured guiltily toward the sunroom. Not only had the smell of death grown unbearable; watching my mother's face turn a greenish-gray was ghoulish and revolting. I could not bear to remember her that way. The sunroom was a decided mistake. Oddly hot and stuffy, it also plagued us with a skylight that could not be turned off. With rest impossible, we chatted a stream-of-consciousness--and strangely mechanical--blur of past memories and future uncertainties that only tightened our nerves. I tried to recline on a gaudily floral couch, but I must have sprung into a different position every three minutes. Suddenly, as if summoned, I stood up.

I walked boldly back to my mother's room and marched right up to her bed. If the smell of death still clung to the room, I no longer noticed. This was my mother. A zealous wave of possession swelled up to claim our last mortal moments together. Soon, the nurse returned. She disrupted her own quiet ritual by speaking into the dimness, "Your mother is one strong lady! Her heart is back in normal rhythm!" In that instant, a gestalt--my mother's "go-to" German word--a burst of light broke through the gloom. I knew what the nurse had meant. My mother wanted me to see her die. Her heart itself had told me so.

With my eyes fixed on her lovely face a few more priceless moments, I then resigned myself to the fold-out couch across the room. I half sat up, leaning on one elbow as I listened, spellbound. My strong little mother was still gasping raucously for air, but something had changed: a lilt--an excitement with its own deliberate rhythm brought the irregularity of her exhaustion to a climax. And almost as if on cue, I began singing "Amazing Grace."

What happened next leaps the bonds of time. As I sang, "And grace will lead me--" my mother did not gasp but sighed, as if fusing her very spirit with my last word "home." In that same instant I felt a swift movement above me to my right. It swooped across the room and was gone like a bird of prey claiming a prize. After all these years, I should wonder if I imagined it. But my mother's chariot had swung low. Her jealous escort had snatched her from earth's sorrow to heaven's joy. I have never seen an angel, but I felt this one carry my mother home.

I ran for my sister. "It's time! It's time! Come!" As we rushed back to my mother's side, I marveled to see her still breathing, for her chest continued to rise and fall quietly like a receding tide, even though I was certain her spirit was gone. One strong heart indeed! And then, like a receding tide, her body slipped past the lip of time, and she was still.

In numb disbelief after eighteen hours of watching, we called the nurse. She slipped in, doing all the things that Hospice nurses do without a word: she pressed her fingers to my mother's wrist; she felt her neck; she put her face to my mother's mouth. "All right, 4:00 a.m. I will put as the time." My eyes locked with my sister's, and a forensic door was sealed--as if my mother, who lay within a finger's touch, was nowhere to be found. Foggy skies had closed around her, opening for me a Christmas gift I nearly missed.

My mother was not snatched away without suffering. But not one second too long had she endured, for her heart soared on the wings of song as the angels carried her "home"--dying yet living with her heart in perfect sinus rhythm to defy the mockery of a stroke. The same Lord who had not delivered her from tribulation had nonetheless spared her from disfiguration. And how would we know He had spared her the worst unless the worst had indeed seemed certain?

Without a doubt, the timing of her death was flawless with both a natural and a supernatural flair in which I--a mortal--had played an eternal part. This is our Lord, astounding in His tenderness even though we suffer. He sees the sparrow fall because it falls. And He scoops it up with a perfect rhythm of song and sets it free on a fresh current of energy. This electric charge--this burst of light building even as I sang--all this. If I hadn't returned to my mother's deathbed, I would have missed this harpazo of her spirit. And supposing I had not returned exactly when I did, would her heart even have gone back into normal rhythm?

We speak of an imminent Rapture as if it should be untimed, but this simply cannot be so. If I know anything, I know that His time--when the Lord takes His Bride away--will be a perfect time. And it will also be a climactic time in the fullness of time. Like notes of a symphony, each event will merge miraculously on the Conductor's cue: His Coming back into the room of our suffering; our watching and singing and sighing; and His angels snatching us up to meet Him in the air. All this--to be forever with the Lord--will take place in but the twinkling of an eye. And no vigil is too long to await the Prince of Peace.