I had just gotten off the phone with Jon’s father and was IM’ing with Rick. The last two bites of my Strawberry-Banana Berry Blast Cheerios was in the bowl and I ws in the midst of swallowing them and answering Rick’s question when the phone rang. It was our local hospice coordinator asking to speak to “Pastor McCabe”. I handed off the phone to Jon and mouthed “this is it”. He nodded at me and I went downstairs to find some clean khakis. Finding that all my pseudo-clerical stuff was either needing to be washed or ironed, I settled on my jeans and tossed the rest of my clothes on.

We drove out to the farmhouse and made it in record time. The body was still there and we all sat down and prayed a prayer of commital. I was asked to notify the big Lutheran church in town as the funeral will likely be held there. I walked out of the house into the yard and felt the cool breeze of the morning blowing around me as I tried to get cell phone reception. Everything was quiet and as I talked to the secretary at the church, I watched the corn waving in the breeze across the street. The beauty and stillness all around me was comforting and I stayed and gazed out for a while afterward.

Jon and the family talked about funeral things while I took care of comforting various people. (One of the granddaughters had just woken up and was in hysterics. I sat on the bed with her and held her for awhile.) They talked about various hymns that would be sung, songs that would be played, Scripture that would be read… The family was amazingly jovial about it and was ribbing Jon for having to look up one of the verse references. There were stories told of what she did for the church, the community, and of her raising of her seven kids.

The guys from the funeral home came and took the body away. All her children and grandchildren who were present kissed her forehead before they put her on the stretcher and loaded her into the back of the station wagon. The funeral director talked with the family briefly and made arrangements for all of us to meet tomorrow to discuss the plans. We followed them outside as they loaded her in the back and stood and watched as they drove away.

Into your hands , O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Lorraine. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints of light. Amen.

I haven’t updated ::Meditatio:: in the last week because it’s been really tough and I’ve been using a filter on my LJ to post. (If you’re on LJ and not on the filter, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like you — I just want to work things out before I publicize the inner workings of my mind to the masses.)

Monday night, I was watching an episode of Law & Order: SVU and it triggered a panic attack related to the sexual harassment I dealt with in high school. I spent the next 3 hours vomiting and sobbing because I didn’t want to wake Jon up. I posted a message on my LJ talking about what was going on and emailed a couple college friends (who have known me long enough to watch me struggle with this) for prayer. I finally got to sleep with the help of some personal prayer.

The next morning, I dragged myself out on my walk and came back home feeling like I had been dragged through the gutter. (Perhaps I should have skipped walking 3 miles after purging my stomach?) I told Jon what happened and he prayed with me. I was online and Rick was too, so I asked him for prayer. The people praying over me (both IRL and via AIM) made me start crying and Jon tucked me into bed for a nice Xanax-induced nap. When I woke up from my nap, I went to PT (which was good — electro-therapy and deep tissue massage are a good stress reliever) and that ended up helping. That night, I attended a pick-up softball game which brightened my spirits.

On Wednesday, my friend Jill called to check on me and we talked. I got teary-eyed yet again, but that was OK — tears are healing. I also walked about 6 miles between my morning and afternoon walks and got some more of the stress out.

On Thursday, we learned that a parishioner who was in the hospital in Sioux Falls was now considered terminally ill and I called to check on her. She had a virus hit her brain and it has really impacted her ability to speak. When I called, she cried and started saying “I want to go home! I want to go home!” I prayed with her and fought back the tears. We ended up going to Monte on errands and on the way back, I started getting teary-eyed while thinking of my parishioner. We went to the neighborhood block party that night and had a really great time, something I’ve needed.

This is all the reason that I haven’t really been updating much lately. I haven’t really had the mental energy. We went to see our parishioner at home yesterday and her ability to speak coherently is pretty well shot as is most of her ability to swallow. (This meant that she couldn’t receive the wafer and had difficulty with the wine when we gave her Communion.) She is pretty lucid other than that and knows that she’s dying. I know she’s really ready to go and I just pray that it would be quick and painless for her when it comes…

Much prayer would be appreciated now for my sanity.

I am in the process of writing the Confirmation curriculum for our first year kids and I was giving Jon a hard time about including all these revisionist things and heretical ideas from the Early Church. (You know you’re a pastor or pastor’s wife when you can make the vein in your spouse’s head throb at the mention of revisionist Old Testament scholars. 🙂 ) I left my laptop on and went to go make some fruit salad and found the following “vandalism” when I returned:

We’re going to look at the creation of the world today. Darwin was inhaling some exotic form of marijuana when he wrote “The Origin of Species” and had just consumed four pints of good old Galapagos Islands Tequila when he saw a vision of fish walking out of the sea. Maybe this would explain why many of us were afraid to swim when we were kids.

This resulted in me walking into the bedroom, falling on the bed laughing, then rolling over and falling off the bed on the floor, and lying on my back choking because I was laughing so hard. Jon was falling over laughing at me laughing this hard. I think we both really need to get out of the house more often…

I woke up feeling anxious (mostly because I was hungry) and while I wait for my sourdough bread and juice to hit my stomach, I’m blogging out some ponderings I have.

Me thinks I should go to sleep now…