Anticipating a funeral

I've mentioned my paternal Grandmother a few times in the course of my blogging. She's my last living grandparent. She has been quite ill, and news from back home this morning was not good.

Her doctor and the hospice nurses have told the family there is nothing more they can do for her in hospital except try to make her comfortable, and they can do that at home. It may be hours, it may be days, but I don't expect it will be much longer than that. Renal failure, congestive heart failure, arrhythmia, probably pneumonia soon, will surely make sure of it.

A friend read the following to me yesterday evening. When I spoke to my Mother this morning, the words came back to mind.

On the occasion of their daughter's death, General Robert E. Lee wrote to his grieving wife,

"...I cannot express the anguish I feel at the death of our sweet Annie. To know that I shall never see her again on earth, that her place in our circle, which I always hoped one day to enjoy, is forever vacant, is agonising in the extreme.  But God in this, as in all things, has mingled mercy with the blow, in selecting that one best prepared to leave us.  May you be able to join me in saying 'His will be done!'
...I know how much you will grieve and how much she will be mourned. I wish I could give you any comfort, but beyond our hope in the great mercy of God, and the belief that he takes her at the time and place when it is best for her to go, there is none.  May that same mercy be extended to us all, and may we be prepared for His summons." (from Recollections and Letters of General Lee)

The apostle Paul encouraged the Thessalonians to

... sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede them which are asleep.

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

And I'll try to take that good advice myself, and share it with my family in the sad days which shall surely come.