My Christmas-tide Adventure with Mother Wilhelmina

I was quiet as my book club discussed a book of Christmas stories. As I listened, my mind roved over the busy year reaching its close. Then I remembered last December and knew I had a story to tell.

It all started with a cookie decorating invite, I told my friends.

That Saturday night in St. Louis, we gathered in a warm kitchen for some sisterly time together with sugar cookie cutouts and royal icing. My nieces had flown me in from California for the occasion. The weekend trip had seemed overwhelming as I scanned my Christmas to-do list. But I knew we all needed the time, coming at the end of a stressful year like none other.

As conversation flowed, we were acutely aware of one absence: the matriarch of our family, my oldest sister—and second mother.

She wasn’t with us to spice up our cookie decorating with salty comments. She couldn’t regale us with one of her famous stories, born of a creative mind and keen interest in human nature.

And we wouldn’t hear her call “God be with you, sweethearts,” at the end of this night.

The past year had been painful as we watched a strong woman lose her fight with Alzheimer’s. Its end seemed near. When I flew home Monday, I would take with me the memory of a happy evening that was an island in a sea of turbulent emotions.

But before I left, I had a mission, urged on by my nieces, who knew I was just crazy enough to try to accomplish it.

For the past few years, on my trips to the Midwest, I had tried to find time for a pilgrimage to Gower, Missouri—home of a young religious order, the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles. The trip meant a four-hour drive over winding country roads, always too far for my packed schedule.

Thousands had trekked to the monastery in remote Gower to see the incorrupt body of the order’s foundress, Mother Wilhelmina Lancaster. Miracles were reported, including, notably, the healing of a dementia patient.

My nieces and I cherished the hope that the saintly nun would work a miracle and pull my sister from the brink of dementia and death. But time was short. If this pilgrimage was going to happen, it would have to be this weekend. And I was going home on Monday. I had just one day to accomplish the trip with its eight-hour round-trip drive.

This was complicated by the fact that my sister—once a huge fan of car rides—could now tolerate only a few minutes on the road before becoming anxious and agitated.

That was just the first of many things that could make the pilgrimage an almost impossible task. I knew there would be countless unpredictable stops for the bathroom or for food. And there was something else: the distinct possibility my sister would try to open the door of the moving car. She had never tried this on my watch, but I knew it might happen.

Gaudete Sunday

The trip did seem foolhardy. And by the next morning, I had almost talked myself out of it. Why not enjoy a leisurely day with my family before heading home?

Then again, Gaudete Sunday had dawned clear and unseasonably warm—a beautiful day for a drive. And if I missed this chance, it wouldn’t come again.

I would put my sister in the car, and we’d see how far we could get, I decided. If we made it to Gower, Missouri, in the middle of nowhere, that would be a miracle in itself.

And so it was that around 2 p.m., I buckled my sister into her seat and headed out of town.

My dear brother-in-law said later he had no idea where we were going—he expected we’d be back for dinner. And, truth be told, I’m not sure what I told him as I walked out the door. I knew the trip seemed like a fool’s errand, so in my embarrassment, I probably mumbled something about a car ride.

That wasn’t all mental reservation. I was quite certain we would be back within the hour.

In the back seat was my nephew David. An accident at birth had left him with many challenges. But he had long been his mother’s right-hand man and partner in adventure.

My sister had always adored car rides. So many memories involved driving with her: Sunday jaunts along the Missouri River, day trips to our cabin in Warrenton, summer road trips, and long fall drives to go apple picking. Driving down country byways, saying the family Rosary, grass-scented air wafting in through the open windows of our station wagon. Then the familiar, oft-repeated night prayers: “Dear Jesus, we love you. Please take care of everything.”

For a while, as dementia progressed, car rides continued to be a reliable source of comfort. My brother-in-law would drive my sister along country roads; they’d say the Rosary, count deer.

Over the last six months, though, the rides had become brief respites, often followed by a panicky dash home as anxiety and fear of the unknown gripped her. It was best not to have a destination in mind, lest one be disappointed.

Yet on this unseasonably warm afternoon, things seemed different. As the suburbs became rural expanses, there was quiet from the passenger seat.

The silence gave me time to reflect. My sister and I—bookends in our large family, with 20 years separating us—had been through tragedy together. When our parents died, she had added eighth-grade me to her own lineup of 7 kids and counting, and we both went on. Life was a blur over the next few years, then it took me far away to college, marriage, and kids of my own.

We stayed close, but never had we sat down and addressed what had happened to us in those fateful months when both parents had succumbed to cancer. For years, much remained unspoken.

Alzheimer’s had been an unexpected blessing: It allowed my sister to say things she had guarded for years, giving me a window into the depth of her love.

This, even though she didn’t know who I was anymore. As she neared the end of her battle with the disease, she had forgotten our names—her twelve children and me, the one of whom she said in a moment of clarity, “Our parents died, and she became mine.” She had forgotten her husband’s name.

She once had a queenly way of introducing herself with quiet dignity: “Hi, I’m Mary Ann Daub.” Yet now she had forgotten her own name as well.

There were only two names she still remembered and clung to, calling on them frequently: the names of Jesus and Mary.

It was for the sake of those names that I was making this madcap trip. It was for the sake of the faith my sister had nurtured in me despite tragedy, the prayers that followed me when I left home.

Would the diminutive nun restore to us the woman we had been grieving these five years? My faith told me I needed to make the journey and ask, seek, knock.

I found confirmation in the miles unfolding behind us as my nephew and I listened to oldies and made occasional conversation. We were still driving, and my passenger was still docile.

The sun set. Three hours of driving were behind us. The abbey church where Mother Wilhelmina’s body lay was closed to pilgrims each night at 7:30 p.m. If all continued to go well, we’d arrive around 7 p.m.

We turned off the interstate, made a pit stop at a gas station, and that’s when things went haywire. Back in the car, sundowners hit with a vengeance.

The drive, the abbey, Mother Wilhelmina: suddenly, my sister would have none of it.

No matter that we were in the middle of nowhere, with no place to go but a cornfield, we needed to stop, she begged. I searched frantically for a child lock in the unfamiliar car as she began feeling for the door handle. I cajoled, pleaded, prayed. My nephew held the door shut, but every few minutes, I was forced to stop the car, then go on, using up precious time as I brought all my improv skills to bear on the situation.

I was driving down dark roads that seemed to go on forever, with a full moon overhead and a passenger who was trying to step out of a moving car. Despair. As 7:30 approached, my dream was vanishing. And four hours of driving would be for naught.

Finally, the abbey church loomed before us. I parked, jumped out, and ran to the nun, who was locking the huge doors. “Sister!” I burst into tears and spilled out my story between sobs.

Minutes later, we were inside the dim church, lit by a flickering sanctuary lamp. There in a glass reliquary lay the figure in her black habit, untouched by decay despite years in the damp ground.

I wish I could say something earth-shattering occurred at this point.

I can’t. My sister was unmoved—or perhaps spooked—by the sight of tiny Mother Wilhelmina lying serenely in her glass case. A cursory glance and she was out the door.

Leaving her in my nephew’s care, I spent a few more minutes begging for a miracle.

Then I closed the abbey doors and stepped out into the night air.

The monastery grounds were silent. Then, as I fumbled for my keys, a deep, menacing growl sent a chill down my spine. Safely behind the steering wheel, I spied an enormous shadowy shape just feet from my car. The monastery guard dog meant business.

I turned the car down the abbey drive, but I had one last errand. I stopped just inside the gates and stepped out.

The kindly nun had encouraged me to take some dirt from Mother Wilhelmina’s grave as a relic. A seemingly simple task, but the grave was about a quarter mile from the car, in a dark corner of the monastery grounds, the path lit dimly by funereal ground lights.

Clutching a ziplock bag, I picked my way across the bumpy ground. A white stone cross marked the empty grave. I filled my bag, then sprinted back to the car, the moon shining full overhead, coyotes yipping in the distance, and the thought of the giant dog spurring me on.

We now had four hours of driving ahead of us, and the tranquil spell of the afternoon was long gone. Before we were a mile out, my passenger began once again, with determination, to try to climb out of the moving car. Surely this vehicle had a child lock! Once again, no luck finding it.

Somehow, we made it to a truck stop, where the cashier must have wondered at our talk of buying duct tape “so she can’t get out.” Duct tape on the door handle did the trick and we were on our way once again.

The rest of the trip was a weary blur. My sister rambled constantly and incoherently, dozing briefly, then resuming the dream-like narrative of late-stage dementia. There were innumerable stops, as I had predicted, and at each stop, confusion and the task of patiently coaxing the passenger back to the car.

Looking back at my texts from that night, I see, “ETA around 12:30 a.m., I think.”

Then, “12:23 a.m.: “Stopping for a milkshake.”

It was 2:30 a.m. when we finally pulled into the driveway. Back in the bright kitchen, my brother-in-law, my nephew, and I stared, frazzled, at my sister as she sat down at the kitchen table and began calmly folding laundry.

It was abundantly clear that no miracle of immediate healing had occurred.

Exhausted, I caught a few hours of sleep, then boarded a flight back to LA.

As we considered the adventure (or misadventure) we became convinced that some sort of miracle had occurred, albeit not one we could see. It would become clear to us, we hoped.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

One week later, leaving Sunday Mass, I glanced at my texts and stopped short: “Respirations almost non-existent.”

I left my kids decorating the tree: “Mom, you have to go.” My suitcase was still packed from the week before. I grabbed it and ran.

By 2:30 a.m., I was walking in the door of the little house on St. Denis St. once again. One glance at my sister lying unconscious, and I knew I had made the right decision.

Death could come in a day, or it could come in a week, the hospice nurse told us later that morning. My niece Maria told him, “I know my mom. She wants to die on Christmas.”

Over the next two days, within the house where my sister had raised a gaggle of children and welcomed whoever came to the door with needs or sorrows, there was a hush, a sense of serene expectation. Siblings, children, grandchildren, and friends came and went in a constant stream, saying goodbye.

Everyone who passed through the house prayed. Some poured out their hearts.

Outside, a swell of concern arose from friends and fellow parishioners: “The woman so many had looked up to and admired needed their prayers; for once, it wasn’t the other way around,” one of my nephews said later.

We had gone from a sense of chaotic deterioration to watching every little thing fall into place with a peaceful sense of inevitability.

Christmas Eve

Dec. 24: Reluctantly, I said goodbye and flew home just in time for midnight Mass.

We hoped my niece’s premonition would prove wrong. None of us wanted Christmas forever linked with death. But in the candle-lit chapel, as carols proclaimed the Christ Child’s birth, I knew with certainty that she was right—my sister was headed home.

Back in Missouri, my nephew Peter was driving his youngest brother to the airport for a night flight back to Vermont. As he drove, he worried that his dad would be alone when the end came.

He dropped Christopher at the airport door; as he watched him walk away, he got the call. He raced back to join his dad, praying the Divine Mercy chaplet at his mom’s side. When the chaplet ended, she breathed her last. Little miracles, he said later.

Christmas

And so, before dawn on Christmas morning, I got a call confirming what I already knew: journey’s end.

Although our request for physical healing was denied, we were left with a strong sense of the miraculous. Viewed with the eyes of faith, the events that followed the trip to Gower were an answer to prayer, a grace obtained no doubt by the saintly Mother Wilhelmina.

Weeks before she died, the ability to string together intelligible thoughts almost completely gone, my sister had shocked me with one coherent sentence: “I’ll be in heaven soon.” She knew where she wanted her journey to end: at the manger.

We were confident her prayer had been granted. In her last moments awake and somewhat aware, her parish priest had given her the apostolic pardon, with its indulgence for the remission of punishment due to sin.

A Christmas-morning entry into rest with the Newborn King, but not until loose ends were tied up—the children home from near and far, the spiritual house tidied.

Epiphany

“It was amazing how many little things that mom had zero control over kept popping up in her favor … ‘Well done, good and faithful servant,’ reverberated loudly in my ears as I witnessed all these miracles,” my nephew Patrick said later.

Lesson learned: When you go looking for a miracle, have confidence. It may unfurl in stages, and not necessarily in the way you expect.

Looking back, I realized the trip itself was part of the miracle, combining as it did things near and dear to my sister’s heart: a road trip, lived faith that God would “take care of everything,” and one heck of a good story.

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