Isn't it Divine?

My Love of The Divine Mercy was never not a thing.

I remember hearing the chaplet prayed over our neighbor, Mrs. Torpe.

She was alive. But bed ridden. I remember befriending her children and walking into their house, classically decorated. Cleaner than anywhere I’d been.

Mrs. Torpe laid right by the front door in a hospital bed. Hooked to machines. She had beautiful smooth pale and rosy skin. Crystal blue eyes and straight long blonde hair pulled back away from her face.

The first time I saw her, in the state she was in…I was stopped dead in my tracks. I remember walking toward her but suddenly stopping, I realized the grave condition. I immediately hurt. For her children, for her robot like husband who worked, cleaned, and cooked on a loop, and for her. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.

I was sad to see that this was happening, death was happening, in real time, right in their living room. It wasn't conventional and it felt dark.

Occasionally there would be a nurse beside her. The children would read to her and talk with her and dab her face with cold washcloths. They’d occasionally give her a straw to draw water from, if she was awake and lucid. If she could physically swallow. Somehow they’d innately know without verbally communicating with each her-when she needed a cool cloth or was thirsty. Eventually, I would know too. I would dab her face if the kids were elsewhere in the house.

I realized it was her eyes that let everyone know. They started to let me know.

I was profoundly impacted by this experience because until her death, she was comforted and loved and shown undeniable and divine mercy.

When I was feeling sorry for them I neglected to see that this wasn't a time of mourning for them. Even though their lives changed dramatically and they were literally staring death in the face every day, this was their reality. They united in the transition and put their boots on the ground.

Their mother did not suffer. Even though her body had given up, her spirit and unspoken affection were very much alive. She was dying in the loving arms of her family. Savoring the last days with no doubt that she was so loved and revered. Her children went to school and her husband to work and her daughter would twirl around in her school prom dress beside her.

Mrs. Torpe had been devoutly spiritual and very active in her church. The family attended church more than once a week. They’d dress up and spend their entire Sunday there. After she became ill they attended a few times a month.

Mrs. Torpe was a homemaker and her husband adored her.

He’d never stopped looking at her the way he looked at her the first time they’d met. They traveled and spent their days like every family on the block.

The way this family adapted to this suddenly unconventional situation was through God. They were able to love their mother and send her to heaven in the most beautiful way.

Two days before she passed away I sat in their kitchen while a priest came to pray the divine mercy chaplet over her. It was solemn but not sad. More like quietly and devoutly praying. The prayer was long and repetitive but it was profoundly and beautiful. I remember hearing them almost celebrate for a moment because at the end of the prayer she’d opened her eyes for a moment and she stand tried to speak.

Mercy.

Mercy. To me was the greatest strength of Jesus. Mercy in sickness and death, in betrayal and evil deeds. And I think having the ability to show mercy is the most obedient and selfless ways we can honor God.

To give someone mercy or forgiveness, like a sort of absolution, in a very dark hour and who is most likely praying most for mercy- is the most beautiful and profound act of humanity.

When the ambulance came to take Mrs. Torpe for the last time, I remember knowing it was time. I stood in my kitchen window looking out at their house about 2 minutes or so before they came. It was just getting dark and it was rainy.

It was mostly uneventful, with no neighbors around. The ambulance parked and pulled out the stretcher. They’d spend a long time inside. They quietly took Mrs. Torpe out and eventually drove away.

After she’d gone the mourning began. Even in her fractured state, she gave her family motherly structure and a loving routine.

I was going to miss her.

We should be merciful. And bear witness to the living God.