GRIEVING DIFFERENTLY

By Colleen Tinker

This week is surreal—my mother just died. She’s been on hospice care, and we have known that she is declining steadily, but last week on her 93rd birthday, she had a stroke. It was an insult to her fragile body that she could not survive. 

I admit I feel numb. Walking with her through the last nine-and-a-half years since her heart valve surgery has been difficult on more levels than I can describe. We have moved her three times, downsizing and distributing her furnishings. We have managed her finances and her medical care, interacting with the staff where she now lives and helping her process her reactions as life became more out of her control. 

My mother was one of six children of Romanian immigrants who homesteaded in Saskatchewan. She grew up during the Depression and Dust Bowl days, and she learned to work hard. Her parents raised their family as Adventists and saw to it that their children went to college and had opportunities to have careers. The immigrant determination that gave her parents the courage to launch new lives on a new continent, however, also included an Old World sternness that made home a place that was sometimes frightening. 

My mother graduated from Walla Walla College with a bachelor’s degree in nursing, and during her student days she met my father, a physical therapist. They married, and my mother graduated from nursing two months before I was born.

The Lord gave me a very bright and gifted mother, and I thank Him for her. Even more than that, my mother wanted to serve the Lord. In a truly remarkable act of courage and faith, my parents, led by my dad who read avidly and insisted that they dig for truth, left Adventism when they were in their 70s. 

When they moved to be near Richard and me in 1998, they began attending our Christian church with us, and eventually they became members, completely leaving Seventh-day Adventism. They renounced Ellen White and rejoiced as they embraced the finished work of Jesus’ atonement and the reality of living in the new covenant. 

My mother’s life as a believer has shown me some realities about being part of the body of Christ. Although she has trusted Jesus and knew her sins were forgiven, her new birth did not automatically “fix” the scars of her early life with its abuses. As the years passed she told me cryptic tidbits of memories too painful or embarrassing for her, and although I have only an un-detailed mental sketch of what her life on the Saskatchewan farm looked like, I know that she has born the deep marks of its privations and punishments. Her certainty that Jesus is her Savior gave her an anchor that stabilized her in many ways, but her suppressed scars generated expectations which we could never quite fulfill. 

I have left her room these past few days with widely ranging reactions. I have been surprised by anger and relief mingled together; I have felt heaviness and even nausea as I have held her hand and watched her labored breathing. I have felt sad for the losses and for her helplessness to combat the devastation of her stroke. And underlying every emotion is compassion for her suffering, for her own pain which she never was able to process adequately so she could live in freedom from her past. 

One night last week Richard suggested that I sing to her, and although she is verbally unresponsive, she moved her right leg and arm as she heard hymns that she has always loved. As I leaned over her ear and sang softly, I was aware that while I have conflicted feelings as a daughter, I could fully embrace her as a sister in Christ. I could sing songs I knew she loved and thus comfort and encourage her as she began to leave her time on earth to embrace her freedom of being in the presence of the Lord Jesus. 

My husband, who has been a rock of strength to me through this journey, said something very helpful a few weeks ago. I mentioned to him that some people would likely spend hours a day with a dying parent, but I knew that my mother would get tired and actually wanted our visits to end on many days. He replied, “If anyone says anything to you about it, just tell them, ‘She and I are fine, and I’ll catch her on the other side.’”

Richard’s words comforted me as I watched my mother begin her transition to freedom from her failing body and her painful emotions. Because I know that she is saved, I know that I will see her in the Kingdom—and there we will both be free of our blinders and scars. There she and I will be able to get to know each other fully, in the light of the Lord Jesus, and we will have eternity together to serve the Lord and to know each other as He intended for us to be known.

Tonight she is gone. The Lord has taken her from her tired body, and she is with Him. Because I know God’s word is truth, I know that her transition from her body to the Lord’s presence is gain for her. She is now with Christ, and that is “very much better” (Phil. 1:21–23). As our pastor Gary Inrig often says, “She is more alive now than she has ever been.” She can see clearly, and she knows she is loved and safe.

And I heard a voice from heaven, saying, “Write, ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on!’” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “so that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow with them” (Rev. 14:13). 

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Colleen Tinker

Colleen Tinker, the editor of Proclamation! magazine, and her husband Richard left Adventism in 1998 with their two sons, Roy and Nathanael, who were in grades six and ten. They have co-led the Former Adventist Fellowship since 1999. Colleen, a graduate of Walla Walla University, is a former high school English teacher and also the former managing editor of Adventist Today magazine. Colleen became the stepmother of Roy and Nathanael in 1989, and in 2008 she adopted them. Romans 8:15-17 has assumed new depth and significance for her and Richard since she and her sons chose to claim each other legally and permanently. She and Richard share an office and a commitment to sharing the gospel of the true Jesus with all of those seeking a way out of the bondage of the false gospel of Adventism.

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