Mom became less and less responsive. She no longer wanted to drink, eat or take her medication. And the staff at the nursing home, in hospice care, began to talk about her “transition.”

My wise older brother warned me not to expect too much from the old, fun-loving mother with the razor-sharp wit.

I heard: “She sleeps 22 out of 24 hours a day.”

At the age of 84, time – and Jesus – called.

I knew it. I could already feel her spirit near me in the mountains – in the same river valley where her ancestors settled in Tennessee when George Washington first became president – and not far from her hometown of Greeneville, where she was the first baby born at Laughlin Hospital.

In quiet moments I could talk to Jesus and feel Mom with me. It had been a year since she had last spoken to me on the phone. So in many ways I had already said goodbye.

What had troubled this strong-willed retired teacher – what ultimately landed her in the nursing home – was now wearing her down and causing her to tell my father and brother, “I don’t want to open my eyes anymore. I just want to go back to the garden…”

That last part confused everyone. But I assumed that “the garden” meant a dream or that she must have already been on her way to the afterlife and Jesus was showing her the way.

When I heard this story, I really didn’t know what to expect when we finally got there. And so I prayed.

We entered the nursing home on a Monday afternoon.

Mom turned out to be lively and quite talkative too. She held our hands and said “I love you” to my wife, son, nephew, brother and me. My nephew even managed to get her to drink some tea and water.

Then she made another witty remark when she asked about Alice.

We all let out a collective “Huh?”

“The only Alice I know is the one from that old TV show,” my brother said.

I also racked my brain and thought about the housekeeper in Three Girls and Three Boys and the waitress at Mel’s Diner.

Then someone pointed to my nephew’s Alice Cooper t-shirt. And we were grateful to see that Mom’s eyesight wasn’t so bad after all; she could read the words without her glasses. We all laughed. Mom was still full of surprises.

I kissed her right cheek. It was still as velvety soft as I remembered it from my childhood.

“They used to be softer,” she said when I complimented her. “I could take care of them then.”

“With what?” I asked.

“Aloe vera,” she replied. “The aloe plant.”

Smiling, I kissed my mom on the forehead as she lay in her hospital bed, slowly getting exhausted after our visit had already lasted over 20 minutes.

Still, I left her full of joy and hope. Maybe she would start eating and drinking and taking her medicine again. Maybe she would make it to December for our annual Christmas visit.

I spent the rest of Monday thinking about Mom as we took a quick trip to Chick’s Beach, where she taught me to play in the sand when I was growing up in Virginia Beach in the ’70s.

On Tuesday we returned. I knelt by Mom’s bed, held her hand and kissed her forehead to wake her up.

“It’s me, Joey,” I said.

“I know,” she said quietly. “Did you stay here overnight?”

“No,” I replied. “We were here yesterday.”

I told Mom that the night before I had ordered one of her favorite dishes – fried soft shell crabs.

“Remember how we used to catch them and you used to cook them and put them on bread with mayonnaise?”

“No,” she said quietly.

I tried to explain it to her in more detail, but she didn’t seem interested or just didn’t understand.

So I told her that she was a great mother and that she taught me what was right and what was wrong.

“I tried,” she said, already sounding tired.

That day, the four of us chatted a little, but it soon became clear that Mom wanted to close her eyes – and maybe even return “to the garden.”

On Wednesday, as we were leaving town, we stopped again to visit Mom, but this time she barely woke up when I quietly approached her bed, just like the day before.

“I love you too,” she told me.

But she really didn’t say much more. I kissed her forehead, her cheek and her hand. I told her that I wanted to see her again, but at the same time I told God that I knew that my mom’s difficult fate was in His hands.

Four days later my mom went to “the garden” forever.

I suppose she must be in the Garden of Eden now – the paradise created by God that can only exist in the afterlife. Yet that paradise reveals itself every morning in the promise of the rising sun, so piercingly bright that we must look away.

When I see sunlight, I see God. And now I see Mom, too. She’s healed of everything that ailed her – and perfect, as she was at 21 when she graduated from college, or 25 when she married Dad, or 33 and carefree when she taught me how to crab on the Lynnhaven River. She’s in my heart and soul, too – my biggest fan and harshest critic.

And so I pray, knowing that God answered my prayer by leaving my mother here to say goodbye. She held on and was alert that day to see me, as my brother suspected. And yet I know that her spirit is with Jesus and Jesus is in my heart. So she is not really gone, but waiting in the garden until one day I close my eyes forever and hear her voice in the bright light saying, “This way, Joey…”