Lectionary column for All Saints Day: John 11:32-44

To understand what I am going to tell you, you need to know that my parents were scientists and that my mother’s mind had a decidedly unpoetic bent. Nonetheless, they read me poems from the time I was very young because they paid attention to what gladdened my spirit.

Near the end of my mother’s life such gladness was mostly a thing of the past. She was living with us as we tried, inadequately, to cope with the ravages of Parkinson’s disease. Her conversation took strange turns. Although her legs barely moved, her brain bundled her off on hallucinogenic journeys. Thankfully, she always came back and knew who we were. In fact, I regret that at times she saw all too clearly how stressed-out I was. “Are you writing?” friends would ask. “Are you crazy?” I felt like yelling.

In the final weeks my mother made a peculiar request. She ripped a page from a magazine she was paging through—she could no longer read much but she’d turn the pages. Then she asked Aura, the woman who helped us care for her, to tape the page to my bedroom door, up the two flights of stairs she could no longer manage. Aura told me this, indicating that she realized it made no sense, but she did it because of my mother’s insistence. The ad my mother had torn out was for diamond earrings. Aura knew that I don’t have pierced ears or crave expensive jewelry.