An Announcement

Friends, please hold us close to your hearts this morning. My mama, Linda Burchfield, went to Heaven yesterday evening. She passed peacefully.

Her hospice team let us know a week ago her time was approaching. Since then, Bekah, Ben, and I were with Mama. We had time to say all the important things. Mama knew she was well loved.

Even though she had been non-verbal and mostly asleep for days, we included her in every conversation. We shared music, prayers, and memories. We laughed uproariously over old, digitized home movies and wept with pride and the deepest love for her. And when she took her last breath, Rebekah was by her side, singing to Mama as she crossed out of this world and into the next.

This past Friday evening was the last time Mama told me she loved me, but that wasn’t the only thing she said.

Rebekah, Ben, and I walked into her room that night. We had just shrugged off our coats and put our things down when Mama said, “My three angels are here.”

She said it in a way that sounded like an announcement, like we had interrupted a visit, one in which introductions need to be made.

“Mama, do you mean me, Ben, and Bekah are your three angels?”

“No,” she said without hesitation or confusion.

Despite my deep Christian faith, I don’t know what happens after we die. None of us do. What I do know, though, is my own experience. In the past week, Sacredness has been palpable. It was all over Mama’s room – tenderness, goodness, the feeling of important work to be done. The sense that we were not alone, that a company of protectors had gently cordoned off the area so we wouldn’t be bothered. And that is the blessed place where Mama’s story ends.

We will post her obituary and service information when they are complete.

In the meantime, my sorrow looms large, but my hope looms larger. Take it from me – God is real, and God is Love.