These last several weeks, my husband and I have been making the hour drive up to see his mother, who is in hospice care. During the week he goes up after work, and once a week I make the trip on my own, then we go together on the weekend.

I have a little experience sitting with the dying. A couple years ago I wrote a lot about a gal I referred to as my Cooking Buddy. I took turns sitting with her one or two evenings a week along with a group of other women during her last days. Each of us women had our “thing” with her. Mine was cooking new recipes. My Cooking Buddy would find them, have her husband buy the ingredients, and then she’d sit in the living room and talk to me while I cooked in the adjoining kitchen. It was a sacred time, a holy time, and an honor I can’t even describe.

When I’m with my MIL I feel the same way. I watch her sleep and think of the times we had together. As I fed her lunch one day, we talked about angels and whether she was afraid to die and how she looked forward to seeing our Lord in this next phase of her life. She’s not afraid, she’s ready, but sorry to leave us.

My grandmother, who my MIL knew from their church, made me go out with my husband. I know people laugh over that statement, but she really did. My grandmother was an extremely aggressive, high maintenance sort who got her way one way or the other. She almost died of pneumonia, then told me she didn’t die because I hadn’t called that boy. God forbid I keep that old lady from dying, so I finally left a lame message on his answering machine. He called me back out of pity because he knew my grandmother.

The rest is history, and we’re about to celebrate 25 years of marriage. So my connection to my MIL is rather strong and though she doesn’t own a computer to read my writing, I’ve printed my blogs and columns for her all these years as Christmas and birthday gifts. She’s one of my biggest fans.

As my husband and I sat with her one Sunday she drifted in and out of sleep. One of the aides came in and gave her medication, and lunch. After that she kept sticking her finger in her mouth trying to loosen whatever was stuck. Finally, she asked for a toothpick.

Well, hospice is in the memory care area of the facility she lives in. There are no toothpicks floating around because no one wants an Alzheimer’s patient to go on a toothpick rampage. But as I did with my Cooking Buddy, I aimed to please the dying. I went out to the main kitchen and found her a toothpick. She could barely stay awake, so my husband’s and my job was to make sure she didn’t stab any vital organs, like her eye.

She picked every tooth in her mouth. Though she was sleepy I could tell she was truly enjoying the simple freedom of managing that toothpick. I know it’s a silly notion; it was just a toothpick. But when it comes down to the true meaning of life, all the stuff we accumulate won’t matter in the least. It’s the simple things that will really matter to us in the end.

Give the dying woman a toothpick, for heaven’s sake!

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing and her blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh by Gretchen Leigh,” or twitter @livewithgleigh. Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Life section.