Rose

Rose (not her real name) was over 80, quite ill, and nearing the end of her life. Her body was frail, her voice weak, but she seemed to have so much to say. As I stood by her hospital bed, she told me her mother and aunt were in the hallway. (They both died over 20 years prior.) I asked about her children, whom I knew had recently visited. She said that they had just left to go back to college. (Her children had graduated at least 30 years ago.) I commented on an aide who was mopping the room. Rose seemed to think she was in her childhood home. She was not troubled that her mind was collapsing 80 years of time into a single day. As I listened to her, and as we traveled back and forth over the decades, I remembered words I had heard the poet Christian Wiman use in a sermon a few days before. He quoted the line, “When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more…” from the gospel hymn, “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder.” In that moment of standing with a person moving toward death, I understood eternity in new ways — not just as a future after death, but as a reality of all time.