What we expected sometime. And what we didn’t expect this week
Below is the text of yesterday’s post on my Facebook page:
Evelyn Taylor, October 5, 1945—October 6, 2025.
She left this world in her sleep in the middle of the night Monday morning, evidently peacefully, a few hours after we celebrated her 80th birthday.
I had prayed for months that when she died, she wouldn't suffer. She didn't.
We will remember her and thank God at Christ's Church on Western Row Road in Mason, Ohio:
Next Wednesday, October 15
Visitation 5:30. Service at 7:00.
Anyone who has experienced the death of someone close knows that it is a gut punch, even when you were expecting it. We were expecting this, and we were not expecting it. She had declined markedly since this summer, but nothing Sunday indicated that the end was near. She ate well. We celebrated her birthday with cookies and a helium balloon, and her fellow residents sang Happy Birthday to her. She was alert much of the time. She ate all her lunch. She brightened when she heard the singing, and we even got a smile or two from her.
Each of these pictures was taken this year at the memory center where Evelyn was living. But none any later than May.
So even though we knew her death was inevitable, I had trouble believing it when the hospice volunteer called me at 4:45 Monday morning.
My time since then has been a blur of notifying others of her death and responding to their condolences when they heard the news, devising a plan with my kids for her memorial service and then recruiting all those who would participate, handling details with the church and the funeral home, and spending time with friends who don’t want me to be alone.
I’m very tired.
I want to write more about this experience, and I will. Maybe next week.
There’s no way to escape the shock of the separation, and everyone with experience says the impact of the loss is no less even when you’re expecting it. We were expecting it, but not this week.
We’ll be OK. I continue to reflect, even amid tears, on how good God has been to me. This situation could have been so much worse in more ways than I have the energy today to enumerate.
I’m very tired. Many thoughts are competing for attention in my overwrought brain. I hope to be able to sort them out soon.