Dreams should be … Dreams should be such as this: your mother in heaven singing, nay leading the angelic choir and the redeemed in praise and worship.

Mom led a heroic life, though she would decry accolades. Raped by her step father, she left the farm and high school to marry my father when she was 17. At 50, mother of five, she had finished high school and graduated from college with a nursing degree. She was a heroic role model to us.

But alas, Primary Progressive Aphasia and dementia gripped her like King Kong had Fay Wray. Its squeeze allowed momentary respites, but fewer and fewer between. Mom had a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate), very specifically detailed. A ‘DO NOT FEED THE BEARS’ sign could not have been more clear. Responding to my inquiry, the doctor, relief as visible as if hoping for that very question, replied that indeed, Mom, in a diabetid coma, was a candidate for hospice care.

What had happened was that one supper time that none of us were there to help, she must have experience momentary clarity of mind. We were told that she ate everything within reach, including all her neighbors’ desserts. Note: she’d never been a big eater. We believe that Mom knew exactly what she was doing. That night she went into a diabetic coma with a blood sugar level of 787. Unresponsive the next morning, the facility sent her to the hospital. It was the Intensive Care doctor who I asked about hospice.

Mom wanted no obstacles impeding her journey to heaven. You see, Mom was a dynamo when it came to her spirituality. She knew, that she knew, that she knew that she knew. She conversed with her Savior and friend regularly. And when you stood beside her in church and heard her pray and worship, you knew that she’d been in the presence of the King – and not Kong, either.

But speaking of standing in church, during the times of singing, standing beside Mom was an experience. She could not sing is as blunt a statement as could be made. Her singing made you stop singing. But she so wanted to worship that she never backed up a bit. She was going to praise God with the voice she was given if it choked the Pope.

Though Dad was still living and perfectly independent, his short-term memory was so bad that he signed me as medical power of attorney in order to keep up with Mom’s medications and health issues. The same with himself. This factor is what led to me killing both of them – Mom first by denying her recovery medicine or tube feeding.

Here, though, let me tell you about a dream I had soon after placing Mom in a lock-down nursing care facility. We, Dad and I, could no longer care for her at home. The dream was of Mom standing on an impossibly high pedestal slash podium, a sort of platform. Before her were hordes of people, thousands upon thousands upon thousands – the masses stretching beyond sight. Mom was leading them in songs of praise, leading them with both her voice and baton. The symphonic harmony was electrifying. Suddenly, Mom snapped her baton to her left, directing it to a single person about midway back of the vastness of the people. On cue, that person, a female, sang out with a pitch perfect resonance that flooded my eyes with tears, waking me from the blessedness of the dream. I knew that the one she’d directed was one such as herself, blessing the King with all her soul. I knew also that Mom’s reward was blessing the King.

Dreams of your mother should be such as this.