I stand there like an idiot, hands folded behind my back, feeling completely useless. My brother, a physician, is discussing medical matters with a neurologist, both of them cool and detached. A monitor beeps quietly, almost politely. I catch a few words here and there, all of them ominous, none of them comforting or the least bit encouraging. (Ever notice that in medical parlance you never hear adjectives such as “massive” or “severe” used to describe “recovery” or “improvement”?)

A few visitors wander in from time to time, shaking hands with Roger and me. “Your mother talked about her boys all the time,” they say, or “It’s nice to finally meet Lily’s sons.” Most of them are Chinese, like our mom, and many of them speak with thick accents. A good number of them are from Mom’s church, it seems, and some bring their entire families – five, six people crowd into the room. A few of them hold Mom’s hand and pray aloud in Cantonese. I understand a few words or phrases, wondering if – hoping – that somewhere deep down in her subconscious, Mom is nodding and praying along with them.

One young man, thirty-something, walks in around 5:30 in the afternoon. He looks tired and a little concerned as he holds Mom’s hand, leans over her and says a prayer. He nods at us and leaves. “I’ll be back later,” he says. Sure enough, two hours or so later, he walks back in, this time with his two little daughters. Each girl has a balloon, and they proceed to talking to Mom in Chinese.

The man chats with us. He came over from Hong Kong only a few years back, before his children were born. I don’t remember where he said he met my mom – my impression was that she just started talking to him one day at a restaurant or someplace like that. Then he says, “My whole family loves Aunt Lily … she introduced us to Jesus.”

Over the next day or two, we find out that Mom has been quite the evangelist there in Los Angeles, meeting random Chinese people – sometimes entire families – and inviting them for a home-cooked meal at her small apartment, followed by an introduction to her Lord. (It helped, of course, that she was fluent in seven Chinese dialects, speaking not only in the different languages, but with the different provincial accents.) According to her pastor, Mom routinely had a dozen or more people she’d only just met crammed into her living room, all eating – take my word for it – some really good food. And afterwards, feeling full and grateful, these same people listened to this new friend (who was, in many cases, their only acquaintance in the States) telling them, in a language they could understand, about man’s problems of sin, separation and death, and God’s answer of love, salvation and eternal life. They listened to her introduce them to Jesus.

And by all accounts, Mom had done this kind of thing for years and years.

A few days later, I came back to Florida. We eventually moved Mom to a care facility in Indiana, where my brother lives. I went to see her a few times when I was up visiting Roger. She looked bad the last couple of times – really bad. I knew it wouldn’t be long before my brother called me, before life went on hold for a time. Mom passed away quietly last May, after three years in a coma from which she never awoke.

But you know what? As sad as I’ve been now and then, thinking about how much I miss both my parents, how much I wish they could watch their grandson grow up … I can’t help thanking God for letting me be in that hospital room in L.A. to hear that one, priceless phrase: “She introduced us to Jesus.” The grandest eulogy, the boldest epitaph would have been cheap drivel by comparison.

“She introduced us to Jesus.”

At her funeral, as I touched her cool hand, I whispered – whimpered – “I love you, Mom.” And right about then, I like to think, Jesus was hugging her and saying, “Well done, Lily. Welcome home. You won’t believe how many friends of yours I’ve gotten to know …”

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