We would have celebrated her birthday this week, but…

Phone calls that you receive at 4:15 am are never good ones. So when I groggily grabbed my phone on July 14th, 2025, and saw that the caller was Charter Senior Living, I knew the conversation would be about my mom and would not be pleasant.

I wasn’t totally surprised to hear that my mother, Margaret Burke, was being rushed to the emergency room at Williamson Medical Center. The night before, I had responded to a rather frantic phone call in which she pleaded for me to come visit her at Charter. I did, only to find her extremely weak, fidgety, and talking…but making little sense. I was still uneasy as I finally left after she fell into an exhausted sleep.

Soon after arriving at Room 12 in the ER, I knew she was in pain. Eyes squinted shut, her cries persisted even after a dose of morphine was introduced by IV.  The nurse, the doctor and I all asked if she was hurting still. Her answer was an unexplainable “no”.  The cries continued.

A gurney wheeled into Room 15 carrying a young man, followed closely by a young girl, EMT techs, the Doctor and all the nurses on duty…obviously concerned with a very critical situation. For the next thirty minutes or so, all attention was understandably devoted to Room 15 as that young man passed from life. 

Those thirty minutes were hard to endure as my mother’s painful cries continued without easing. Finally a nurse returned and administered something more that allowed Mother to sleep. She knew that I was there, and squeezed my hand several times. 

The doctor told me that she would be admitted and moved to the ICU. I left for a quick trip to mother’s room at Charter Senior Living to secure a few essentials for her. I stopped by home to get Diane and when we reached the hospital, Margaret Burke was unconscious in room 608 where she would spend her final hours on this earth.

It was suggested by the attending physician, a very sympathetic doctor who had treated her in the past, that we enter a phase of “comfort care” which is soft speak for “just make her comfortable as she winds down to the end.” It was for the best.

Providentially, our former pastor, Gary Henecke, was across the hall with his wife who was recovering from pneumonia. When Cayce arrived, and Gary became aware of the severity of our situation, he came and prayed a most welcome prayer for my mother and the family.

Soon after, we noticed the monitors recording a heartbeat that was slowing considerably. 50…45…42… 

Without stimulus from inside that room, Mother’s eyes, that had been tightly closed since her move to ICU, suddenly opened wide and she stared straight up for several moments. As I squeezed her hand, Diane’s questions about what she was seeing went unanswered. As she shut them once again…38…34…28… 

The flatline then appeared and she was gone. My lifelong friend, Bill Griggs, and his wife Beverly were there, visiting the Heneckes. They came round with a comforting presence during those last minutes .

Was it heaven that she saw as her life was ending? We can’t know for sure what was really going on as Mother approached her finish line. But something startled her vision vividly enough for her to open those eyes that had been firmly fixed shut for hours, in a determined wide stare.

The last eight months had been difficult ones physically for my mother and I know that passing was welcomed by her, and ended a rapidly increasing discomfort. 

 A life of sacrifice…of caring for others more than self…of giving far beyond reason…had ended. But we were comforted by a deep assurance that The Lord she had served so faithfully had welcomed her home. And, perhaps her eyes had indicated that she caught a glimpse of that home as she was crossing worlds.

No matter how old you are…no matter how old she is, or how right it might be, it still hurts when you lose your mom.

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