I was in the Dominican Republic with 22 Cabarrus County high school students and 2 Young Life college leaders. It was wonderful and exhausting. We were doing hard labor with rebar and cement blocks, hammers and nails, shovels and dirt in the hot Dominican sun of July 2001.

I had left a lot behind. My mother was recovering from major brain surgery from a month earlier, an apparent iteration of her ovarian cancer first discovered in 1994. I was hesitant to leave the country with her in such a fragile state, but she, as always, was adamant about things going on as normal, even if her life was not.

Although our time in the DR was packed, I found an opportunity to call her one day. On this particular day, the Cabarrus crowd and I had gone rafting in the Jimenoa River. It was exhilarating and scary like any rafting trip, with rapids that you think might send you under and calm spots which felt like how Heaven will be–still, bright sunshine, peace.

There was also the opportunity to climb up on some rocks and take a 10-15 foot jump and plunge into the water. 10-15 feet always sounds so low and do-able–until you get there and think to yourself, “Hmmm…this is actually quiet high and I am afraid.” But when a bunch of teenagers is challenging and encouraging you to do it, you do despite your fears. Injury and fear versus the tough time a group of high schoolers will give you? The latter wins out every time.

I was relating this experience to my mother later that day, from the pay phone back at camp. It was my time in line, with sweet Sara behind me waiting to call her folks back in Concord. Sara told me after I hung with my mom that she could tell something was different, that my mother and I seemed to be having the conversation I had waited for, one that connected my loves to her.

As I told my mother about the rafting and the jump/plunge into the warm Dominican waters, my mother surprised me with her answer. “I’d like to do that with you one day there in the DR.”

You must now that my mother a) did not travel nor aspire to travel to foreign countries and b) did not white water raft,and if she had, would not jump from rocks into waters when you could just stay in the raft.

But here she was, telling me in the recovering from brain surgery, that she wanted to come to the Dominican with me, the place I call my second home country, and ride the rapids together. And I knew she meant that, despite the fact that all of this was far from the norm for her. But when you have battled cancer for 7 years and are now facing brain tumors, what was the “norm” any more? The time to wait for adventure and for living her life was over; my hesitant, play-it-safe mother was ready for more. And I determined that I would get her to the DR and go rafting with her as soon as I could.

But our mother-daughter adventure in the Dominican did not come to pass. After the initial brain surgery in June 2001, my mother would never be the same. More tumors would come. She would succumb to cancer in February 2002.

It has always broken my heart that we did not get to fulfill this wish of hers and mine. It seems cruel of the Creator to open up this shaft of light, to connect two people in way they have both longed for but not been able to do, just to strip it away before its advent.

While I did not let the perceived cruelty overtake me and chose to be thankful for the connection with my mom, it still hurts. Why couldn’t she have lived, at least for that, just one more year? For that time when mother and daughter, despite years of a strained relationship, could come together and experience life, real life together, emotions bared, hesitancies lifted, joy blooming?

But it did not happen. My heart aches because of it and doesn’t repair. Time heals all wounds? Whatever. I remember our phone call, Sweet Sara listening beside me, the joy of connection, and the loss of its fruition. Always.

Today at church, for All Saints Sunday, we remembered those Saints gone before us. And we sang, predictably, “Shall We Gather at the River.” I’m sure I’ve sung it before and just don’t remember doing so. But today, it hit me with that force of surprise only reserved for matters of the heart. A river. A gathering. Meeting her there. Seeing that face that I long to see, that I need to see, that I miss seeing. That smile, that smile at you that only your mother can give; because no one, no one, is ever as glad to see you as your mother and glad to hear all your stories and dreams like her. And apparently, as glad to jump into the water with you. It’s fruition possible. Probable. Likely.

I saw her there, at God’s river. Greeting me, hugging me, beckoning me to the raft. Healthy,cancer-free, fear-free. Connecting with deep heart joy.

“Let’s go,” she says. “I’m ready; I’ve been waiting for you.”