We’re safely home now after a week on the road back to Tennessee for my wife’s Grandmother’s funeral.

Hattie A. Bumgardner
1910-2008

Grandmother is safely Home, too.

I’ve called her “Grandmother” for about 25 years, although she was actually my grandmother-in-law. She was a great lady, and died less than a month shy of her 98th birthday, the last living of 11 children.

When Granddad died 5 years ago, we didn’t know how long Grandmother would hang on. You see, they had been married 69½ years when he died. Definitely a rare commodity these days. But Grandmother persevered, staying on for a year in the old white clapboard-sided farm house perched atop Store Hill in Jenkins, Kentucky.

From there, she moved to Remington House, an assisted-living community in Kingsport, near her other granddaughter (my sister-in-law), and there she stayed up until just after Easter of this year. A virulent stomach bug made its way through Remington House, and Grandmother spent a day in the hospital receiving fluids before returning home. The management had asked all outsiders to not come to visit the residents until the epidemic had passed. So, Palm Sunday rolls around, and the church that had faithfully come every week to lead worship did not show up. This bugged Grandmother….it was Sunday…Palm Sunday at that, and she was determined to do something. So…she rounded up all the residents who were ambulatory, and taught the Sunday School lesson herself!

That was her last Sunday there, for on Good Friday she went back into the hospital, where we were able to visit her throughout the week following Easter while we were there for Spring Break. It was a grand time. She didn’t mind (nor did the hospital, particularly) when six or seven of us–Caitlin and Joshua included–piled into her room to visit. Nor did they mind when we brought her Pal’s hot dogs, complete with chili and onions you could smell down the hall. For that was where Grandmother was at her best–in a crowd. Whether around the dining room table in the old farm house, or holding court from her hospital bed, she loved a crowd!

About three weeks ago we got a call from Catherine’s mother, telling us that she was going back to Tennessee to be with Grandmother, because Grandmother had decided she was tired and wanted to discontinue her physical therapy and medications. “I’m tired. I’ve got a Living Will, and I know what it means. And if you don’t take me off my medicines, then I’ll just go on a hunger strike!” She had one more fight left in her, and this was it. So, dutifully, the physical therapy was discontinued and the medications withdrawn, except for pain medication. She was moved into the hospice suite and the wait began.

They discontinued everything on a Monday, and she drifted off to sleep that night, expecting to wake up in the arms of her Savior. When she awoke on Tuesday still in her bed in the nursing home, she was mad! “I’m supposed to be dead! What am I still doing here?” she demanded to know. God’s time and our time don’t always match up.

Over the next two weeks she slowly declined. Sleeping more and more, eating less and less, and eventually nothing. Waking up to talk with family or friends who stopped by, and always bidding them farewell with, “You all take care, now, and I’ll see you on the other side!”

About 11:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 3 (Derby Day, no less!), everything slowed to a stop, and Hattie Bumgardner let go of this life and in the twinkling of an eye, took hold of her Savior’s hand, where she was reunited with those whom she loved who had gone on before her.

Grandmother was safely home.

We cried–all of us–when the call came. Even though we had been expecting it, we cried. I remember reading recently that grieving is the price we pay for having loved. It’s the price we pay for having been loved, too. The visitation at the funeral home was more like a family reunion. Many of the nieces and nephews were there. Friends from church and community all came.

The funeral was a celebration. The church choir came and sang two songs, and her grandson (my brother-in-law) led everyone in singing “His Eye is On The Sparrow,” a song which Grandmother had requested that everyone sing while circled around her bed the preceding Wednesday. I shared some thoughts from Scripture, then her nephew and his Gospel singers sang. The service ended as we wheeled her casket out of the chapel while they were singing “Oh When The Saints Go Marching In” (another of her requests).

The slow crawl to the family cemetery reminded me of things I had forgotten about rural life–of traffic stopping until the procession had passed, of men on the street stopping, removing their hats, and bowing their heads as we passed. Then we turned up the hill, winding around a narrow road, until we got to the entrance, and 8 strong men then began the long walk up another hill to the grave site. Everything in place, I read more Scripture (from 1 Corinthians 15 and Revelation 21), and we had prayer. As we left, several folks came by, patted the coffin, and said softly, “Good by, Hattie……We’ll see you on the other side!”

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:35-39, ESV