The Passing of the Ruby, the 53-Years Seal, and the Nurse’s Benediction
The systems of this world love to treat the end of a physical life as cold, sterile, and terrifying defeat. They use the vocabulary of panic and the fear of death to keep human soul’s small and trembling. But inside the sanctuary of the New Covenant, the final page of an earthly assignment is revealed for what it truly is: a majestic coronation a beautifully orchestrated transition, and the ultimate victory of a completed race. To see this final seal unrolled, we have to step into the quiet, blue-lit corridor of a hospital wing during the 11-7-night shift, exactly nine years after my mother’s first miracle. The year is 1992; I am now a fully practicing licensed staff RN working on the respiratory unit.
Over those nine years there were many major changes among many challenges of ups and downs. I like to focus on the positives because they all were from the strengths that came from the challenges. My mother was able to have her tube feeding removed and we all became accustomed to living with the disabilities left after a stroke. Though things were different, life was full and beautiful as well as appreciated because that is how we chose to live. My parents were able to move back together in their own house, we had our third child, after which I went back to school to become an RN, graduating in 1990.
Then somewhere in July of 1992, my mother developed pneumonia, had to be hospitalized and placed again on a ventilator though my mother still had her never give up attitude, her body weakened to the point she had to have a gastrostomy tube and tube feedings again. She was eventually transferred to my unit from ICU with plans for discharge. Honestly while accepting and planning on being involved with her rehab, I was tired, it was hard to think of starting all over again like we did the nine years prior.
The reality of caregiving is that honesty is sometimes messy. I was spent, my flesh was tired and my heart was quietly crying out for a release from the exhausting cycles of machines and hospital rooms. Yet, right at the hard edge of my human limitations, the Master Potter was spinning the wheel to finalize the ultimate victory of a completed race. My mother’s final alert hours on this earth became a breathtaking visual testament to what we had built together over those nine years.
Lying in her hospital bed, she refused to look away from her daughter. She physically reached out her hand and pulled back the heavy privacy drape around her bed, anchoring her eyes entirely on me as I worked my 11-to-7-night shift, tenderly caring for her elderly frail roommate. Her final conscious gaze was spent simply admiring her daughter in uniform. She was watching her own caregiver mantle in motion.
The next evening, a strange, heavy wall of feeling kept me from walking into her room before report–a divine shield protecting my heart. When the shift report ended, I went to the drinking fountain outside her door still feeling that shield keeping me out until the sounds were different coming from her dark room. I slowly walked in to find her unresponsive. The code was called. When the emergency team finally cleared the quiet room, leaving a sacred stillness, my coworker gently washed the ruby and diamond ring my father had proudly slipped onto her finger at her homecoming after six months hospitalization. Then slipped it into my hand, telling me to “Never take it off.” In that quiet space, from behind the veil of a heavy medical crisis, a royal coronation took place. The Ruby of sacrificial love and the twin diamonds of indestructible grace were officially transferred to my hand. For thirty-one unbroken years from that literal night in 1992 until just one year ago, I wore that ring–until the ruby stone fell out and became lost right around the time I was getting a burning desire to start writing, to build some kind of legacy to leave my children, to leave them with stories of my life. The era of carrying the heavy sacrifice and blood of the past–now the indestructible diamonds of pure grace, joy, and everyday gratefulness for me remain.
My father walked into that hospital wearing his suit and tie shortly after, a brilliant man who had survived corporate betrayal and the roaring waves of a bipolar mind. He placed his hand gently on her forehead and delivered the ultimate earthly benediction:
Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been the best wife a man could have.
He walked out to the desk and proudly signed the final papers not as a defeated bystander, but as the triumphant Husband of 53 years!
When the room cleared, I completed her post-mortem care alone. I kissed her forehead, thanked her for all she had given me, asking her to give me her strength and closed the bag.
For centuries, the high-anxiety prophecy updates of this world have marketed “fear porn” to keep souls small, hiding behind a veil of hidden secrets, panic, and the terror of death. But as Peter J. Leithart beautifully unmasks in his study of John, the true gospel has permanently opened the veil and brought an end to taboo by bringing all shadows into the light.
the true gospel has permanently opened the veil and brought an end to taboo by bringing all shadows into the light.
In this New Covenant age of spiritual reality, there are no more secrets, no more hidden scores, and death has zero sting. The veil is ripped wide open. The structure is legally finished, the ruby has served its purpose, and we are completely free to live with pure, unhurried joy and everyday gratefulness along the shore.
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