The Quietest Conversation

My week this week is consumed with sadness.

Sadness for my best girl Joanie and her family.

Joanie was almost five years cancer free when she started getting really bad headaches and was sensitive to light and sound. After some testing, the doctors discovered a couple of tumors in her brain. She went into the hospital in early June and has been there ever since.

Mike, my handsome husband, and I went to see her Tuesday morning. He wanted to stop by the garage first and make an appointment to have Big Red inspected so we took the back roads. I took road pictures.

Mike parked in the hospital lot and clicked the locks behind us. As we walked toward the entrance, an older couple strolled ahead, maybe twenty feet or so. On the grass to our left sat a black woman with a toddler — two, maybe three years old.

“Hi!” the bright-eyed child called out, looking up with expectant hope on his face and lifting a small hand in greeting toward the couple ahead.

No reply.

“Hi,” he tried again with another, but smaller wave. I couldn’t say if they hadn’t heard, or they were just preoccupied, or maybe they were unmoved by all that sweetness blooming right there beside them.

In my mind’s eye, I imagined the moment if that “hi” had been meant for me. Without hesitation, I’d smile and say, “Good morning!” in a sing-song voice.

When we were closer to him, I looked at that sweet face and smiled — my “good morning” at the ready.

But he didn’t say “hi.”

He said, “Jesus loves you.”

The mom’s head came up and she looked at me.

My “Good morning!” might not’ve been the right response, but it was already out before I could reconsider.

I gave her a soft smile, simple and accepting.

She smiled back.

I took the moment in and stored it away. Later I would reflect on it. But right now, my mind was on Joanie.

I had to stop at the information desk to find out what room she was in.

“639-A. Go down the hall behind you and take the A elevator to the sixth floor,” the elderly receptionist told us.

At the sixth floor, we followed the signs. The door was mostly closed. I knocked and a nurse called out that it would be a few minutes. We sat in the waiting room where we were soon joined by Joan’s daughter, Faith.

“I’ve been staying with her at night, but they wouldn’t let me stay with her last night. I slept in the car,” she told us.

Remembering how miserable it was the last time we slept in Big Red, Mike asked, “How did you sleep?”

“Not bad,” Faith said. “Not bad at all.”

After a little chit-chat, Faith tells us, “Mom has been confused lately and some of the things she says don’t make any sense. Just don’t be offended if she says something.”

Faith left to check and see if the nursing staff was done. “You can go in now,” she said when she came back to the waiting area.

We went in and Joanie was happy to see me.

I sat on the edge of her bed, held her hand, stroked her face and hair. “Your skin is so hot,” I said.

“I know. Your cool hands feel so good. Would you put them on the back of my neck?”

I did as she asked. After a bit I got a cool rag and bathed her face, neck, and chest.

“I want to tell you what I want for my funeral,” Joanie said.

“Oh honey. I think you’d better tell your husband or your daughter.”

“I did. But it seems like they’re not listening to me.”

“How about your sister?”

“I told her, too. And Pastor Jay.”

I was not about to promise something on a deathbed that I couldn’t deliver. “If they can’t get it done, honey, I’m not going to have any say.”

“But will you help Ben?”

“Sure I will! Whatever I can do, but sweetness, I don’t want you to go.”

It wasn’t long after that that her husband Ben and daughter Faith came in.

Joanie took Ben's hand and mine. "Miss Peg is going to help you," she told him with urgency in her voice. She went on say what her final wishes were. Ben's eyes glistened with unshed tears.

“We’re going to go. I’ll see you in a couple of days, okay?” I wanted to give the family time with her.

“Okay,” she said.

I gave her hand a last, gentle squeeze, cupped her beautiful face in my hands, and kissed her, told her I loved her, and we left.

Later that day, I was sitting on the kitchen patio, resting and drinking water after mowing the dog run. I guess when your mind is at rest, and not thinking about anything in particular, it allows other thoughts to float in.

“Jesus loves you,” the little one said. Why did he say that to me and not to the couple ahead of us? I wondered.

Then I remembered something that happened the same night.

I’d gone out with the girls (our dogs) on the last pee before bed. I looked up — and caught my breath. The night sky glittered like diamonds, each star a twinkle, a pinprick of eternity. I could almost see the galaxies and worlds beyond, the ones we glimpse through telescope lenses, too far to touch but close enough to stir the soul. How mighty God must be to speak such a vast, beautiful universe into existence. And not just the bigness of it, but the detail! Every star different and God knows every one by name.

My mind drifted back to Earth. I saw how enormous it is — compared to me, anyway — and how intricately, how delicately it’s all balanced. From the way our planet orbits the sun to the inner workings of every cell of every organism. And there I stood, a tiny speck beneath a vast sky full of stars, surrounded by blinking lightning bugs, chirping crickets, and the wind sighing through the trees, in a backyard, in a state, a country, on a planet crafted by the same hand that flung the stars.

Why would He care about a little pissant like me? I thought.

No lie. That’s exactly what I thought.

God, our Lord, and Savior, Jesus, does love each and every one of us and I believe He sent me the answer through the mouth of a babe.

“Jesus loves you.”