A woman's daughter had asked the local minister to come and pray with her mother.


When the minister arrived, he found the woman lying in bed with her head propped up on two pillows. An empty chair sat beside her bed. The minister assumed that the woman had been informed of his visit. 'I guess you were expecting me, he said.' No, who are you?' said the mother. The minister told her his name and then remarked, 'I saw th e empty chair and I figured you knew I was going to show up.


'Oh yeah, the chair,' said the bedridden woman. 'Would you mind closing the door?' Puzzled, the minister shut the door. 'I have never told anyone this, not even my daughter,' said the woman. 'But all of my life I have never known how to pray. At church I used to hear the pastor talk about prayer, but it went right over my head.' I abandoned any attempt at prayer,' the woman continued, 'until one day four years ago; my best friend said to me, 'Betty, prayer is just a simple matter of having a conversation with Jesus. Here is what I suggest. 'Sit down in a chair; place an empty chair in front of you, and in faith see Jesus on the chair. It's not spooky because he promised, 'I will be with you always'. 'Then just speak to him in the same way you're doing with me right now.' 'So, I tried it and I've liked it so much that I do it a couple of hours every day.


I'm careful though. If my daughter saw me talking to an empt y chair, she'd either have a nervous breakdown or send me off to the funny farm.' The minister was deeply moved by the s tory and encouraged the wom an to continue on the journey. Then he prayed with her, anointed her with oil, and returned to the church. Two nights later the daughter called to tell the minister that her mother had died that afternoon. Did she die in peace?' he asked.


Yes, when I left the house about two o'clock , she called me over to her bedside, told me she loved me and kissed me on the cheek. When I got back from the store an hour later, I found her. But there was something strange about her death.

Apparently, just before Mother died,
She leaned over and rested her head on the chair beside the bed. What do you make of that?' The minister wiped a tear from his eye and said, 'I wish we could all go like that.

On one occasion, I was asked to go into a room and be with a daughter whose Mom was dying. Mom was expected to die not long after I was to enter the room. When I went into the room, the daughter was at her Mom's bedside. She did die not long after I had entered the room. Her husband was on his way to be with his wife and daughter of this patient. He did not make it in time.

The daughter did not want to be alone when Mom took her last breath. I was called to step in for her husband who could not make it in time to be with his Mother in Law and wife. When he arrived, his wife was so grateful that I had been with her that she shared this with her husband. During this time, I wondered if some guilt on his part may set in with his own personal grief. Just in case, I offered a prayer of release and blessing for their three lives having known one another in this life to include the Son in Law.

Prayer is a wonderful way to invoke the sacred into our lives. Prayer invites a comprehensive understanding that God/Higher Power is in charge of life and of death. It is a reminder how the presence of God's Spirit supersedes everything and everyone's ultimate ability to care for us beyond our own ability to do so. In this case, prayer was able to invite Unity in a situation whereby possible individual grief could have been encountered at a later time. Prayer enabled all to participate in Mom's dying and death from a level of awareness that includes a life's presence beyond the body itself.

As I write these words, I am reminded how vital prayer is to the Hospice patients and families we serve. Prayer encompasses an eternal awareness and brings forth healing when temporal circumstances could emerge individual flaws in our own psyche. Prayer invites unconditional grace and healing.

For this family, prayer became a way to include all participating in grief to join one another in the path of healing together. It invited what is most sacred in us to seek God for help during a difficult time. Also, prayer gave everyone in the room the ability to seek, and even find, the healing power of prayer by focusing our attention outside our ego enough to know exactly where our strength will come from.

Prayer is a participatory union between those evoking God's presence through faith in a loving being who knows best how to care for us more than ourselves. It is a relationship based on trust. It is a trust reminding us who we really are as God's children. And, it is a trust in God's ultimate Will for our lives beyond our own understanding. It is as though we trust our lives into a Creative order of existence not made with human hands. It is a reminder to each of us just how sacred every moment is and a way of reminding each other who we really are.

Prayer invites us to close our eyes to the world around us and open them up into insight. Here, we see through our eyes what cannot be seen with them. It is here we envision and participate in unconditional love. Innocence is born in this sacred space healing a separation that was never meant to be.

Sam Oliver, author of the new journal, "God a Logs on Living and Dying"