by Tessa Bielecki

Wednesday, January 11

Jessica was utterly gracious to the end, and gave Jan the birthday gift she wanted. She died this morning at 3:45 am, simply, quietly, peacefully taking her last breath. The immediate family gathered round the bed, holding hands, and bidding her farewell. Connie, Fr. Dave and I arrived after she expired, though we came as soon as Jan called. We all sat together around the body with silent prayers and tears and individual memories of this great lady: mother, sister, friend to so many.

Wanda came from Hospice to declare Jessica officially dead. She said it was impossible to close Jess's mouth because of rigor mortis, but that the jaw would relax and close soon. For now the eyes would not stay shut either, which is why our ancestors covered them with coins. As Connie said, "I always thought it was to pay Charon to row you across the river Styx!" Jan and Ted dressed Jessica in an aqua nightgown. I added the blue blanket and the purple scarf. "What a sense of color!" said Ted. Jan put a crucifix in Jessica's hands and Wanda helped remove her wedding and engagement rings. She noted that everyone was still whispering. "Yes," said Jan, "because this is very sacred space." More than one of us looked to see if Jessica would breathe again, even though we knew she never would.

It was good to stay with the body, to kiss Jessica's hands and feet and forehead, to feel the flesh turn cold and waxen. Some people made phone calls, scrambled eggs and coffee, others sat and prayed Jessica along the final mysterious stage of her journey. I felt waves of grief and loss wash over me and collapsed on the bed next to hers and slept a bit.

Four hours later, at 8 am, we celebrated Mass around the body, which was one of Jessica's fondest desires. It's almost impossible to describe what that was like because it was, as Loren said to me, "beautifully intense," "rapturously intense," "ecstatically intense." Fr. Dave blessed the body and all of us with holy water and a juniper branch from Jessica's trees. He blessed the box that will hold her ashes. So much of what he said was inspired in the moment, and with both the beauty and the grief, I can barely remember the words. Or the spontaneous "prayers of the faithful" we all made. I do recall that all the prayers were about gratitude and love and the sense that Jessica lives on in us, like Christ, as we continue to love one another and the whole world, with a heart as large as Jessica's, which left no one out.

We did John 14:1-6,23,27 once again for the Gospel. Connie and I sang Psalm 100 for the responsorial. I felt such a mixture of gladness and grief. "Arise, come to your God, sing him your songs of rejoicing." When I got to the last verse, I choked on the words: "Go within his gates giving thanks, enter his courts with songs of praise..." because I knew that Jessica had passed through those gates and into God's inner courtyard already. At the end of Mass Connie and I sang the chorus to "Morning Star" and many joined in to sing it again:

I have seen the morning star,
upon the distant horizon,
All the shadows of the dark
cannot keep the sun from rising.

I could see out the bedroom window that the sun was indeed rising over the red rocks of Sedona and Jessica's exquisite rose garden. It was consoling to imagine how Jessica herself now shines like the sun over the whole world because she is no longer confined to time and space or the limitations of her own body.

Then two men from the mortuary came to take Jessica's body away to be burned. They did not wear black, and they did not drive a hearse. With utter sensitivity they moved her body onto a stretcher, covered her with purple cloth, and then respectfully moved out of the way and invited us to say our last farewells. Connie and I led the body out to the vehicle with lighted candles to emphasize the ongoing sense of the sacred.

Now I think of the very last pages of the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia, when everyone has gone to heaven and learns that no good thing is ever destroyed. "The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning." And then "the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

Return to Beginning of Journal || Fr. Dave Denny's Reflections on Jessica