In a mother’s last hours, an important visitor just happens to show up.

I was at my whit’s end, fit to be tied, at the end of my rope, barely hanging on. At 5 a.m., after another long and restless night of listening to my mother gasp for every breath, I wrote out a long email of lament to the pastoral care team at my home church. “How long is this going to go on?” “Why does she have to suffer like this?” “Why won’t God just take her?” “Why can’t she just quit fighting and let go?” I wasn’t really expecting or wanting answers to those questions. It was just my lamenting the internal pain I was feeling.

It was Wednesday March 21, six days and six long nights into the vigil of my mother’s last days here on earth. We never dreamed it would take this long.

When I joined my sister to assess the situation and heard the doctor say, “Nothing we can do. … It’s just a matter of time. … Putting her on comfort care,” we knew it was the end.

We didn’t tiptoe through the tulips. We talked openly to Mom about her journey almost being over. We gave her permission to go. “When you are tired of fighting, just let go, go to Jesus, go to the light, go to Dad. He and your son are waiting for you. There are many people here that love you, but there are also many people on the other side that love you, too, and are waiting for you.” “There’ll be no more sorrow, no more pain, no more tears there.”

We painted an appealing picture for her. This mantra of saying goodbye was to be repeated over and over again as the days and nights unfolded.

At one point several days later, I touched her left shoulder.

She turned her head toward me with blinded eyes closed, and asked, “Who is it?”

I replied, “It’s me, your youngest daughter, the baby of the family.”

Next, delivered with much enthusiasm I heard, “I love you.”

What a gift she gave to me in those words! That was the first and only time she said those three words on her own initiative without just repeating them back to us after we said them first. I will always remember that sweet declaration she made to me.

The last night seemed to be the longest and the hardest for me. My sister slept pretty well on the recliner, but I just couldn’t seem to find the peace I needed to sleep. Friends had stopped by Tuesday night to bring snacks and visit. It helped the time pass, but Mom was restless, and so was I. Her moaning was constant and loud. It tore my heart out. I pleaded with God once again to just take Mom. Why did she have to suffer so much? There was no sense in it, in my mind.

On the sixth day, Wednesday, we decided to get hospice involved. Another friend came later that morning and sat with me. She listened patiently to my story, my lamenting, and it meant the world to me. Later someone came in and told us the hospice nurse would be there at 10:30 to talk to us. I was relieved; finally, maybe someone who could help us.

My friend had left, so I went outside the door of my mom’s room to wait for the hospice nurse. I was standing there looking down the long hall toward the nurse’s station.

Suddenly I saw a person I knew well from a town 15 minutes away walking toward me and carrying a small vase of flowers. My eyes welled up, and I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. Someone must have called her, my mind reasoned. Even though it had been a few years since I’d seen or spoken to her, I knew she had attended seminary and was now a part-time pastor.

“Thank you, God,” I breathed. “You knew just who I needed to see today.” But no, as I watched her coming down the hall, she suddenly turned right and disappeared into a resident’s room. I knew she didn’t see me standing there, and for a minute I was confused. I was sure she was coming to see me. At least I need to say hi, I thought.

I walked the few steps to the room she went into and saw her talking to a resident there.

I stood in the doorway and waved at her until she saw me. She said my name with a big question mark in her voice, and I said, “What are you doing here?” As we met in a warm embrace, I choked out, “My mom is dying. Did someone call you?”

“No” she said, “I was just bringing some flowers to this woman from my church.”

She asked where my mom was, and I pointed to the door down the hall.

She said, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

As I walked back to the room, it hit me that I had just witnessed a miracle, but the full impact of what really happened didn’t sink in until later. This woman had no idea when she walked into the health-care center that she was going to be used to be my angel.

Within a few minutes she came to Mom’s room, where the hospice nurse had also just arrived. As my sister and I sat with the nurse while she explained their program, my angel friend went straight to my mom. She was the perfect person. She wasn’t intimidated or repulsed by what she saw there, though most people would be.

I looked over to see my friend holding my mom’s hand, talking softly to her, looking intently into her face and moaning some with her. She was at one with my mom and her pain. What a comfort to me that mom was not alone while we were busy with the hospice nurse!

When we had shared our pain and story with the hospice nurse, she said, “This doesn’t sound like comfort to me,” and went right to work to make mom more comfortable.

As Mom struggled for every raspy, gurgling breath, I pleaded once again for God to take her home. As my sister and I moved to Mom’s side, my angel friend slipped to the background at the foot of the bed, out of the way yet a strong presence to me. My sister and I formed a united circle with Mom. We were holding each other, and each had a hand on Mom. That unity was a beautiful thing. We were in this together and were going to see it to the end. Slower and slower, the breaths came, though still noisy and ragged. We were fixated on her, barely breathing ourselves, in tune with her struggle for each last breath.

Finally, what we had been waiting for for the last 144 hours came. With her final breath, my mother’s face relaxed, and she smiled. It was a fleeting few seconds, but my sister and I both saw it. Peace flooded Mom’s face and the room.

My new definition of peace is the absence of noise. For the first time in many days, my mom was making no noise. The strife was over, the vigil was over, she had arrived. Mom entered heaven on March 21 at 1:01 p.m. For a few minutes no one moved as we took it all in. We were on holy ground. We all embraced.

I thanked my angel friend and marveled at how she had no idea how God was going to use her to minister in such a holy way that day. It hit me that our meeting, my seeing her come down the hall, was the difference of about three seconds. Had I not been outside Mom’s room, had I not been looking in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time, she would have never known I was there. And I would not have known that she was just two rooms away.

Coincidence? No way. It was God orchestrated. You can’t convince me otherwise. It was my miracle on 15th street, Anywhere, USA.

Wanda Bouwman is a member of Lombard (Ill.) Mennonite Church.