Your Three Last Sentences

When I was very little I asked my mother if she grew up in a long cabin like Abe Lincoln?

My mother, who was raised in a very fashionable part of Manhattan, was amused by my question. Needless to say, Mom quickly corrected me.

But when I reached my teenage years, I teased her for how she read The New York Times. While my father and I were consuming news stories about the Vietnam War and political scandals, my mother would make a bee-line to the obituary section in The Times.

“I know, Mom, you are just dying to read the newspaper,” I smirked. My mother would stare at me and sing, “Just you wait Rickey Belous/ Just you wait”— to the tune of Eliza Doolittle’s song from the Broadway blockbuster musical My Fair Lady.

Well, as it turns out, my mother did have the last laugh. As I have grown older, I do find myself very often reading the obituary section of the newspaper. It may not be the very first section I go to, but I do seem to gravitate to it a good deal of the time.

I also have found myself very interested in what people’s last words are. For this reason, I was very interested in a recent article written by Sabra Ciancanelli. Sabra is an editor with one of my favorite spiritual magazines, Guideposts.

She lives in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York and she was walking through her neighborhood — on “the big loop” — with a dear friend of hers. Sabra asked how her friend’s mother was doing.

“Her dementia is getting worse. She has only three phrases left that she can say. Just three.” Sabra’s friend responded.

Sabra thought deeply before speaking. She then expressed compassion and empathy for her friend and her mother. Then she asked what those three phrases were.

The friend took a long pause and then looked deeply at Sabra. “I love you. You’re so beautiful. I am okay. I’m okay. I’m okay,” her friend said.

They walked together for a while in silence. Then Sabra commented, “At least the words she’s left with are all positive.”

They walked together some more in silence, and her friend then agreed with Sabra’s observation. “Mom hardly ever gave a compliment all these years, but thankfully, I hear one now every time I see her. It is almost as if she’s making up for it,” the friend noted.

Sabra’s next comments have really stuck with me:  “I’ve thought a lot about language since then –– the phrases we repeat, the ones we reach for when we want to comfort or compliment someone, the words that rise when everything else grows quiet. I wondered what might remain if my own language someday narrowed. If I have only three phrases left, what would I want them to be?” Sabra asked.

As she thought about it, she felt that the mother of her friend had chosen three perfect phrases to be her last ones:

— I love you.

— You’re so beautiful.

— I’m okay.

I think this shared experience by Sabra touched me for several reasons.

First, it reminded me of the power of our words and our self-talk. So many sacred scriptures from different spiritual paths remind us of ‘the power of the tongue‘ for both good and bad.

Second, this is even more important in the world of the internet, social media, and artificial intelligence. There once was a time when you really had to work very hard to spread the negative power of the tongue or written word. Now you can do it in a nanosecond by just pushing the send button.

Third, Buddha’s teachings about impermanence are so true. Our ability to say things like: “I love you… I am so proud of you…You mean so much to me… I apologize…” etc., will not be around forever. Now is the time to shower these blessings on the good people in our lives.

Fourth, it is important to remember that on a very deep and fundamental level, we are okay. If the material world was all there is — if it were the be-all-and-end-all — then I don’t believe that we could say that all is well. Thank God that there is a beyond — a divine spark — that is inside of all of us 24/7. When we realize that we are one with the one, then we know and feel that all is fundamentally and profoundly well, despite the potholes in the material world.

It might be interesting to think about what we would want our last three sentences to be — while we can still think about it. Then it would be productive to do more to make these three sentences a living reality in our lives right now.

Many blessings

Rev. Rick