“How’d you handle it,
losing your mom, I mean?”
“I don’t know. The
only good thing was we both knew she was dying. We knew she only had a few
months left. She really wanted to prepare me for it. We did her will together.
We picked out songs for her funeral. Flowers. The whole thing. I remember she
once heard a sermon about a woman who’d also died of cancer. And the woman had
come to her pastor and told him exactly what she wanted at her funeral and what
Bible verses to read and everything. And then, when she was all done, she told
him that she wanted to be laid out in an open casket with a fork in her right
hand. And the pastor says, ‘A fork? Why a fork?
’ And she says, ‘When I was a little girl, I used to love
church suppers. And when the meal was done, and people were clearing the
dishes, one of the older women in the church would always come over and lean
down and whisper to me, save your fork. And I loved that. Because I knew it
meant something better was coming—apple pie or chocolate cake or blueberry cobbler,
or something. And pastor,’ she said, ‘when I die, I want people to come by and
see me and then ask you, Why’s she got a fork in her hand? And I want you to
tell them my little story, and then tell them the good news—that when you know
Christ, you know there’s something better coming. There’s something better
coming.’”
My mom loved that story. She had a tape of that sermon and
she played it over and over. So she asked me to make sure she had a fork in her
hand at her funeral. She wanted her friends to know—she wanted me to know—that
when you know Jesus Christ in a real and personal way, there’s something better
coming.”
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