To Hell with the Devil

I had an epiphany earlier this week: Even if you go to hell, you have eternal life. I'm not a spiritual person any more, but I was talking to my mother a few days ago, and it just sort of jumped out at me.

Mom was burned over a substantial portion of her body the Sunday before Thanksgiving in 2002. She was airlifted to a Tampa, Fla., hospital. What wasn't burned was scarred by skin grafting efforts. She lost her right eye, the good one, for that matter, and her right ear melted into the side of her head. She was unable to lift her arms or turn her head after the accident. She spent two years in hospitals and rehabilitation centers before returning to her independence. She had to re-learn how to walk, caught an infection in one of the rehabs & was confined to bed, starting out at ground zero again.

She's been on her own, now 71 years old, for just over a year. She got really sick earlier this year & was hospitalized again, mostly because her airway, damaged by the fire, was very restricted. She has since undergone yet more surgery to open her airway some. Any respiratory infection is life-threatening.

I was thinking back to when I got the call that she'd caught fire while taking a roast out of the oven that evening. The next day, I got to talk to her. She was very hoarse, and at the time, I had no idea she would never recover her voice. She used to sing beautifully.

To put this in perspective, I've had, at best, a contentious relationship with my mother. I felt she did poorly by my siblings and me. So much so that I left home at 12 years old. But I've been thinking this week of all the Sunday school classes that focused on the lake of fire and eternal burning that awaited those who didn't walk the walk. How we were told we would beg for death and the end of pain. I know now that it was all bullshit because my mother shook hands with the Devil, looked him in the eye & flipped him off. In the most agonizing pain most of us only will be able to imagine, as sterile dressings were changed on those open, bleeding burns, her first words to me were, "I'm so glad, so lucky, to be alive."

Even in excruciating pain, much of which plagues her today.