My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God?' (Psalm 42:2) But the Psalmist also says, 'In death there is no one that is mindful of thee.' So it made me happy that I could be with my mother the last few weeks of her life, and for the last ten days at her bedside daily and hourly. Sometimes I thought to myself that it was like being present at a birth to sit by a dying person and see their intentness on what is happening to them. It almost seems that one is absorbed in a struggle, a fearful, grim, physical struggle, to breathe, to swallow, to live. And so, I kept thinking to myself, how necessary it is for one of their loved ones to be beside them, to pray for them, to offer up prayers for them unceasingly, as well as to do all those little offices one can. When my daughter was a little tiny girl, she said to me once, 'When I get to be a great big woman and you are a little tiny girl, I'll take care of you,' and I thought of that when I had to feed my mother by the spoonful and urge her to eat her custard. How good God was to me, to let me be there. I had prayed so constantly that I would be beside her when she died; for years I had offered up that prayer. And God granted it quite literally. I was there, holding her hand, and she just turned her head and sighed.
Dorothy Day, The Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus
death, dorothy-day, grief, psalms