Doris DeGraaf Patten

Grandma with new baby Jonah, 2006

My paternal grandmother, Doris DeGraaf Patten, passed away nearly two weeks ago, early in the morning on Monday, August 18. Grandma would have completed 84 years this November, had she lived, and her death came just shy of my grandparents’ 62nd wedding anniversary. In those years, Grandma birthed ten children, raising nine, as one passed away in infancy. Her grandchildren number twenty-two, and great-grandchildren ten, with three more on the way. Grandma was afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease in the last few years of her life, and so her death actually came rather gradually. In fact, about one week before she passed, my dad called to tell me that Grandma had stopped eating and drinking, meaning that, unless she resumed, the end of her earthly life was certainly not far off. A few days before she died, several members of my extended family were able to set up a vigil, and so my grandma was not alone when she passed; both Grandpa and a daughter were with her. I guess that this is “the thing” about such diseases as Alzheimer’s: There is no ‘surprise’ rending of the family; loved ones may be present at the moment of death itself; and the death is taken by members of the family with a certain amount of peace. At the same time, the family must watch the loved one suffer, find appropriate care (at astronomical cost in today’s world), and, I suppose, make actual ‘decisions’ of some sort about the loved one’s life and death. Death, however it comes, is a reminder of mankind’s break with God, yet for the Christian death always anticipates the coming resurrection of the body, the final act of the believer’s salvation, wrought by God Himself.

“O God of spirits and of all flesh, who has trampled down Death, and made powerless the Devil, and given life to thy world: Do Thou, the same Lord, give rest to the soul of thy departed servant, in a place of brightness, a place of verdure, a place of repose, whence all sickness, sorrow, and sighing have fled away. Pardon every sin which she hath committed, whether by word, or deed, or thought; for Thou art good, and lovest mankind: for there is no man who liveth and sinneth not, and Thou only art without sin, and Thy righteousness is to all eternity, and Thy law is truth.

“For Thou art the Resurrection, and the Life, and the Repose of thy departed servant, O Christ our God, and unto Thee we ascribe glory, together with thy Father who is from everlasting, and thine all-holy, good, and life-creating Spirit: now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.”