How Benedictine spirituality lighted my way forward

By Susan Flansburg

The following story is excerpted from an article I wrote after my mom’s death. If you click on the link at the end, you can read the whole thing, including some helpful wisdom from the Benedictine Sisters. If you like what you read here, please “Like” it, and share if you can!!

I wonder how long this will take, I thought. I’m hungry.

This was not my finest moment: it was uttered – silently, thank God – two hours before my mother would die. I had been called to Des Moines where she lay in a cold and dark intensive care unit room, breathing rhythmically with a ventilator, ashen, eyes closed. The nurses had waited to pull the vent until after I – her eldest child – arrived. Now here, the vent had been removed, my siblings had left for a break, and I was alone with the woman who had ushered me into life.

I was prepared for Mom’s death (or so I told myself), but not, as the minutes began to tick slowly by, to miss dinner.

Had she been able to speak, she’d have been more concerned about the cocktail hour than dinner.

My mother was 81 when she died. It should have been no surprise. The regime she had embraced featured Winston Lights and vodka martinis (hold the vermouth) flavored with a splash of olive juice (often her only fruit).

Despite those unhealthy choices, Mom had bounced back from many near-death experiences: a triple bypass, an aneurism, a life-threatening infection and blood clots.  

She could open her eyes any moment, we all had said. She’s done it before.

She didn’t, though. Not this time.

Carol Ann McCauley Flansburg was brilliant, charming, funny, fun and wise. The wisdom you had to pry out of her, though, because she didn’t like to “be a downer.” She named each of her daughters for a crusader. My namesake is Susan B. Anthony. She highly approved of my working with the Benedictine Sisters and read every Connecting Point cover-to-cover.

The above comes from a story I wrote on the wisdom the Benedictines following Mom’s death. Perhaps it will help you. It still helps me.