Charlie Kirk and Mom
September 4th, 2016. Burn that date into your skull. That’s when this picture of Mom was taken—standing behind the Welcome Center at the Lord’s Table. Years before I pastored the Table. We had just dragged our weary bodies home from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Why? Because cancer had chosen Vinnie. His biopsy landed on June 28th—his birthday. What a gift, right? I tried cracking jokes to keep him smiling before surgery. He did smile going in… but not coming out. Pain. Raw and merciless.
And in the middle of that storm? Mom smiled.
When we were drowning in sorrow. When despair strangled our lungs. When nobody else could pierce the fog. Mom cracked jokes. Corny, outdated, sometimes ridiculous. But her jokes weren’t about punchlines. They were about love. About lifting. About reminding us that hope still had a pulse.
“John, you take good care of him,” she’d warn. “Don’t you dare let him go to the doctor without you.”
“Mom,” I’d groan, “you know I’d never let that happen.”
What she didn’t know? I was already swimming in syringes, tubes, chemicals. Morphine. Dilaudid. Heparin. Ports that clogged. Kidneys under siege. Nightmares that came crawling out of morphine dreams. My hands screwed bags of medicine onto Vinnie’s chest line like I was keeping him alive with duct tape and prayer. And through it all—through the poison, through the pain—Mom just kept on smiling. Believing. Praying. Refusing to bow to despair. She was the strongest person I ever knew.
I see her in Heaven now. Same posture. Same grin. Behind some pearly Welcome Center, greeting every new soul like she’s the CEO of Joy.
“How are you doing?” she asks. “So glad you made it. Welcome home.”
And here’s where it cuts deep—sometimes my vision sparks with shadows. Black spots. Dancing things nobody else sees. Dust motes from Hell. And no, before you say it, the doctor already checked my heart and lungs. Clean. So maybe I’m just crazy. Crazy enough to ask myself: Who will Mom greet first—Vinnie or me?
What a day that will be! When Jesus Himself comes for me! (The Gaithers sang that line. Mom ate it up like candy.)
But let me tell you what the grave couldn’t kill: Mom’s smile. She traded her broken body for eternity and hasn’t stopped grinning once. Not in Heaven. Not ever. I’ll bet my last breath she had Charlie Kirk chuckling when he walked through the gates the other day. And then—like she always did—she prepped him for the Master.
“Preparing me for who?” he probably asked. “What Master?”
“For Jesus,” she answered.
And for the first time in his life… Charlie Kirk was silent. But Mom just kept on smiling.