Lord, help us bear up under our sufferings and call us home in the end.

We were in church this evening and I missed most of the beginning. My 20 mo old has started to resist going into the children's program, screaming at poor DeeDee until she feels so bad for him that she fetches me. It's all a total power tripping manipulation by a toddler. So I've responded with bribery. You want that special snack? Have to go see Mrs. DeeDee first! The approach has met with mixed results.

But I digress.

Once I finally made it into the service, I sit down, start to get comfortable, and that's when I see it: some kind of insect down on the floor under the chair in front of me. I think: Hmmm. This would upset Ari. Then: Hmmm. I hope this doesn't upset the girl sitting there. And then the insect moved. And I thought: Oh! I thought you were dead. I guess not.

About then, Marc and I realized we were both looking at this insect, and he leaned over whispering "I tried to flip him over; his wing is broken." I shrugged. After all, with a broken wing that insect is doomed. It's a flying insect. They're not that adaptable. So, that's that.

Only, it wasn't. Because throughout the service, that insect would randomly start moving again. Little legs going, moving ever so slightly sideways. Then it would stop, as if exhausted, and rest awhile. Each time it stopped, I thought "That's that." But the weird thing is: no one told this insect it was doomed. It didn't know. So it kept trying.

I know, we're getting into a pretty well used and fairly lame analogy here. But I can't help it because I got socked in the head with it this evening. How much do we limit ourselves, all by ourselves? How much do I fool myself into one more try? Should it matter if it's simply hopeless? Is there really ever an end to hope?

I carry a lot of emotional baggage (ha ha! surprised you there, didn't I? You weren't expecting that!). One of the most complicated things I carry around is related to my mom's illness and death - yes, those are two separate things. I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that this is related to Mom, what with Mom being one of the highly complicated things in my life. Ack. Again I digress. Moving along... I reached a point in Mom's illness that I stopped hoping she would get better. Deep down (way down) there's a part of me that believes that the reason she didn't get better is because I stopped Believing.

How's that for guilt?

Have I mentioned this before? Forgive me if I have. Every time I come around to it, it feels so dark and bad that I just want to whisper it quietly like a secret I'm imparting, begging for forgiveness.

There are some problems with this little belief of mine. Logically, I know that giving up hope of recovery didn't kill my mom. The part of me that believes this, however, has the mentality of a small child. It can't hear reason, see logic, believes in Santa Claus and that everything always works out in the end. Plus, there's no way to ask forgiveness from the person I impacted the most (Mom - try to keep up). Not in a tangible way, anyway.

In the first few years after Mom died, I wrote her letters. I always knew she was gone but it helped me believe for a little while that she wasn't so far gone. They weren't for her. They were for me, because I couldn't cope in this cruel world without my mom. Eventually I learned. It was hard, and it sucked. And I stopped writing letters to a dead woman.

Back to the point. I stopped believing Mom would get better. And then she died. And a part of me was relieved. Yep. Awful as it sounds, it's true. The harsh facts: My mother died of starvation, looking overweight and cancer riddled (yes, you can look like you have cancer), addicted to morphine and when you watch someone you love go through this, the end is a relief. A small, cold-comfort kind of relief.

But what if no one had told Mom she was doomed? What if no one had ever used the word terminal? Would she have known anyway?

In a cruel twist of fate, my dog was diagnosed with cancer last year. Liver, metastasized (I've ranted about him, too. Look under "Simon.") I seriously doubt he understood the vet when the vet said "terminal." As smart as he was, I doubt he understood why I was standing there sobbing. Or why, for the last few weeks we had together after that, he got loads and loads of peanut butter. But he died anyway. And I'll never, ever forget those last moments, watching him, waiting with him, seeing the life fade out of his eyes. It's the first time I've watched a soul float away (we can argue elsewhere about dogs having souls, I'm busy here) and I'll never forget it.

So where does the knowledge of our end come from? Internal, external, or both? Do we all die alone or is it possible to go while being loved? Does any of that matter, anyway, as we are judged?

Towards the end of the service, Marc got up, picked up the insect and took it outside to die. I was grateful. Not so the struggle for life wasn't smack in front of me like that, but so the insect could at least feel a bit more at home in the end.