Echoes

The house smells like home.

Aged tendrils of her perfume mingling with fresh coffee. Clean sheets and mothball coat closets. Warm, welcoming scents wafting from the kitchen. Nothing’s cooking, not on this night, but this sacred space is forever stained with timeless vestiges of the past: Thousands of homemade loaves of bread. Cinnamon toast served on orange plates. Steaming bowls of peaches and cream oatmeal. Maple nut milkshakes. Honeybuns with butter.

Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and every day in between.

Countless meals and priceless memories, all doled out by wrinkled hands and a servant’s heart.

It’s her, of course. It’s Mamaw.

Her little white house on Main Street is full tonight. It’s been full for days. We’re all gathered around her chair in a silent swarm, gently vying for position. We just want to see her, touch her, hold on to her magic just a little while longer. One of us holds a hand, another a foot. One of us kisses her cheek. We adjust her blanket not because she’s cold, but because we are. We’re all hoping that maybe we can memorize her, somehow emblazon her essence onto our consciousness so that we’ll never forget. So that this night, these final moments gathered together, might just last us a lifetime.

Like the sacrosanct scents of her house, which she’s lived in since 1954, we’re all evidence of her handiwork. Both within these four walls and beyond them, she has fed us and held us; she has nurtured us and guided us; she’s driven us to school and to church; she’s sat on metal bleachers and watched us play; she’s disciplined and admonished us, taught us wrong from right; she’s worried for us, prayed for us, laughed and cried for us; she’s wrapped our presents and watched us open them; she’s observed us with pride as we married and started families of our own.

She has served us.

She has invested in us.

And above all, she has loved us. Selflessly and with her whole heart.

In all these things, she has indelibly changed us. And selfish as we are, we aren’t unique. We aren’t the only ones gently vying for position, desperate for an opportunity to say goodbye.

To say thank you.

She’s been in a coma for nearly 48 hours, and scarcely has a moment passed without the phone ringing or the doorbell chiming. Her little white house on Main Street has been abuzz, bursting at the seams, a steady ingress and egress of admirers rotating through.

As I watch her with sodden eyes, her pulse weakening and her breath ever-slowing, I’m struck by how such a soft heartbeat could generate such a resounding echo. By how such a quiet, humble woman could so radically change the world.

In The Lazarus Within, I talk about the concept of “outliving your life.” I use Kailen as an example. Here is that brief passage:

“Kailen’s decision to choose hope allowed her to outlive her life, and I believe it can do the same for you and me. It won’t spare us. We will endure suffering and pain, and eventually, we too will die a physical death. But death only applies to the dormant shell; it beats and breathes, and someday it’ll stop doing both. That’s death.

But it’s no tragedy.

Kailen’s meaning and purpose outlived her body.

The real tragedy would have been the opposite.“

I watch in solemnity as the dormant shell fades. After beating and breathing for almost 95 years, it’s nearly time to stop. Eternity is calling. And in the end, it was as peaceful as the January wind whispering through the oak trees out front.

My Mamaw, Mrs. Dorothy Lee Taylor, entered her Heavenly home on Monday, January 20 at around 6:15 in the evening. She was surrounded by those she loved and forever changed; she was surrounded by her echoes.

Her heart is no longer beating, but because she spent nearly a century choosing hope, joy, and love, it will echo across the generations, forever indwelt in her posterity and all who were lucky enough to know her, resonating unimpeded through the boundless strands of time.

This post is for you, Mamaw. Thank you for loving me so well, and for showing me that kindness can change the world.