This is a post about death.

Yeah,  death.

Don’t like the topic? Well, you better get used to it because, unless you’re The Blessed Virgin Mary, you’re going to experience it. And when you do, I hope you have the love and the foresight and the good fortune to experience it the way Mary Ellen’s Aunt Marge experienced it two days ago.

Aunt Marge was one half of the duo known to us for years as Marge and Hollis. Marge and Hollis owned a dairy farm,  a milk bottling and a home milk delivery service in Lebanon, CT.  And then,  forty-two years ago, they moved their family down to Pulaski, TN, where they bought a sprawling, hilly and beautiful cattle farm.

When Uncle Hollis died about fifteen years ago, (after 55 years of marriage) Marge carried on with her daughters, son, grandsons and their families. They were a close-knit, loving family, spending their lives working hard, sharing each other’s sorrows and enjoying each other’s joys.

Whenever Mary Ellen and I visited, we were always surrounded by a houseful of love, the seeds of which Aunt Marge had sowed and cultivated with care.

When I play my hammer dulcimer, Aunt Marge would come out to the back porch where I was standing. She would sit for hours not saying a word, thoroughly enjoying the music.  When I was finished, she would grab my hand, look me in the eye and say, “Jim, that was absolutely beautiful! Thank you so much for sharing your gift with me!”

It didn’t take much to make her happy: feeding her guinea hens in the yard, ordering out for pork barbecue, wearing a big, floppy, purple hat on her 80^th birthday, her children, her grandchildren, Mary Ellen.

A strong woman with a keen intellect, a deep sense of independence, and a heart of pure, 24-karat gold, Aunt Marge was the hub of the universe for all of us who knew her.

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Let me ask you a question. When Jehovah’s Witnesses come knocking at your door, all dressed up in their Sunday-Go-To-Meeting clothes and toting their satchels loaded down with back issues of Watchtower Magazine, what do you do? Do you not answer the doorbell? Do you let your dog jump all over them with his muddy paws? Do you answer the door but talk to them through the screen, and not let them into the house? (I am embarrassed to admit to having done all three of those things.)

Do you know what Aunt Marge did? She invited them in, sat with them in her parlor, and had earnest conversations with them. She said, “There is always something to be learned from everybody.”

Now, Aunt Marge wasn’t overly religious, (As far as I know, she never subscribed to any particular religion, and I never saw her go to church), but she was deeply spiritual, and she always looked at new things with an open mind.

That’s just the type of person that Aunt Marge was; everybody was equal, and everybody had something to say that was worth listening to.

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About two years ago, she started feeling poorly.  Her eyesight started to go. She got dizzy a lot. She often got short of breath.  And then, recently, she found herself tethered to an oxygen tank that assisted her with breathing. However, even with the mechanical assistance, the breath of life was getting more and more difficult for her to draw.  Life became extremely difficult and frustrating for the sweet old girl.

And then, last Sunday, she had the most severe bout of her life, and she panicked.  Gasping for air, she was rushed to the hospital at 2 a.m. where the doctors diagnosed her with pneumonia and congestive heart failure.  They strapped an oxygen mask to her face, and gave the family members the grim news that she had only days left to live.

The initial plan was to get rid of the pneumonia with antibiotics, otherwise Marge’s medical insurance wouldn’t cover the hospital stay.  They forced air into her lungs in an attempt to clear them.  When her vital signs came back to a semblance of normalcy, they were going to transfer her to a hospice unit.

However, as the day wore on, it became apparent that Marge wasn’t ever going to recover enough to breathe without the aid of the invasive oxygen mask, and she would spend the rest of her time on earth gasping for breath.

It was at that point the Aunt Marge made a decision.  She said that she was tired and wanted relief. She decided that she wanted the doctors to give her a sedative so that her breathing would be less labored.  She then called all of her family to her hospital bedside. About five minutes after the sedative was injected, her breathing eased.  She then removed her oxygen mask and sat straight up in bed.

She looked around at all of her family gathered there and she smiled. One by one, she took each of her family members by the hand, (children, grandchildren, grandchildren’s spouses, and great grandchildren), called them each by name, had something special to say to each of them, and then bid them good-bye. 

When that was over, she laid her beautiful, gray head back down on the pillow, asked for another injection of sedative, closed her all-knowing, all-loving eyes, and peacefully drifted off to a place where there would be no more pain for her ever again.

I have tears in my eyes as I am writing this.  I am sad. Bone sad. But I am not sad for her; I’m sad for me and for her family because we all miss her.  I’m also sad for you, dear reader, because you never had the chance to meet this wonderful and deeply caring, deeply human being.

However, at the same time, I am happy, because Aunt Marge, although departed, will never really be gone.  She left the best part of herself here on earth. Her spirit has been imparted to her family.  Her love is growing in them still, and that love is pouring out to the rest of the world by their actions.

I told Mary Ellen yesterday that Aunt Marge knew it would be okay to leave us all, because she knew that Mary Ellen was here, and Mary was just like her. 

Mary is Aunt Marge strong, Aunt Marge tough, Aunt Marge soft, Aunt Marge wise and Aunt Marge loving. Mary Ellen was Aunt Marge’s stellar pupil, and today, Mary Ellen is carrying on Aunt Marge’s tradition of “paying it all forward” and being grateful for all that she has. (And once, when Mary Ellen told Aunt Marge that she, Mary Ellen, learns so much from her, Aunt Marge was shocked and said, “That’s funny. I was just thinking about how much you teach me!)

What a wonderful legacy, huh?

And what a beautiful way to die.