Though I spent a lot of time with my mom in the last years of her life, my sister had been the one to help her with funeral planning. I’d noticed a hymn book on the desk in her bedroom, and eventually there was a file folder on top of it. After they dropped it off, my sister told me that the church secretary had been taken aback by her plan’s level of detail and organization.

Maybe some cancer patients jot down a couple song titles or readings that they’d like their mourners to hear. Most probably trust their families to do the planning. My mom, however, provided her own copies of all readings and songs, in the order they would be needed for the service, and instructions as to which family member or friend was to give each reading.

I didn’t want to ask about what she’d chosen. I’d been to enough Catholic funeral Masses to know what to expect, and I didn’t think ahead much to the day she’d be gone, though I’d tried (and very obviously failed) for years to keep that day from coming. She was already so far from herself — she spent most of the day in bed, and she was so thin that when she did get up and around it looked like an empty pair of pants was walking across the room. A funeral almost seemed irrelevant. The mother I’d grown up with was already gone.

A couple years after the funeral, in my own house, where the curtain rods are slightly crooked because she wasn’t here to help me hang them, I took the time to revisit the first passage about appearances that forced me to attention. It’s chapter six of the Gospel of Matthew. It covers much more than I remembered, and the language of the scripture quotes is more formal than it sounded to me in the church that day. "I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?" The chapter is basically a rapid-fire list of ways to be a good person and please God. I know the prayer-and-pleasing-God aspect of the passage was important to my mom, but I also know this was chosen as a set of guidelines for creating a worthwhile life. In less than 800 words, it gives instructions for charitable giving, staying humble, the power of forgiveness, and not being materialistic.

For as long as I can remember, friends said “That’s your mom?” when they met her for the first time. She had a beautiful face and looked about a decade younger than she was — and, like everything else in her life, this was not by accident. I knew that she’d put plenty of time and care into her appearance, yet this new message from her continues to ring true. Her final years of suffering had taught both of us that what we are on the surface is nothing if we are not doing good things for other people.

***

As her life came closer to its end, I began to appreciate my siblings more than ever. If I couldn’t have my mother in my life, I’d get to have these three people who were so much like her. For some reason, I never remembered to say it during the hours I sat at her bedside, so I tapped out a text message on my phone while walking up the stairs to my apartment one day. “I’ve been meaning to tell you thank you for the siblings.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied.

My mother made sure to remind me of the people she left me with when, midway through the service, a familiar tune began to play. This is "All the Hands of the Earth," I thought, on the verge of inappropriate hysterical laughter.

My youngest sister, who is the darling of my family, was born when I was 14. When she was about 4 years old, our church often played a song called "All the Ends of the Earth." She would stand on a kneeler and sway, perfectly coiffed, dressed up like a doll, singing, "All the hands of the earth have seeeen the power of God. All the hands of the earth have seeeen the power of God.”

Alone or in small groups on a regular Sunday, or on holidays when all six of us were together, we would sing my sister’s version and laugh. She picked this song, I thought to myself. I tried to catch the eye of my dad or sister on either side of me, but they were looking straight ahead, probably thinking of the horde of people behind us who weren’t in on the joke. They were not going to acknowledge me. I settled back in the pew, determined to enjoy the joke. And I did.

I remembered the scene we’d lived so many times, Mom and I glancing at each other and enjoying our family in-joke as the people around us sang the boring, regular words. She would bend over and look my little sister in the eye, singing the revised version along with her, eyebrows up, smile wide, shoulders swaying.

In that moment I became aware that everything was okay. She hadn’t just given me a family — she gave me the assurance that our family would still be the same, even if we were down a member.

Once we were alone in the car that would drive us to the cemetery, I said, "I cannot believe Mom picked 'All the Hands of the Earth!'" Next to me, Dad smiled, and my siblings laughed in the seat behind us. The driver put the car in gear and we rolled out of the parking lot.