When anyone was upset, Mama would often say, “What difference will it make 100 years from now?”

Most things in life, the day-to-day stuff we fret and worry about, don’t matter.

I barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday. Granted, my lunch is usually uneventful, hurriedly eaten standing up after noticing the little hand on the 12, or cross-legged on the couch after seeing Mark eat. I usually scroll through something meaningless on social media, despite promising to read an e-book instead to feed my mind at the same time.

Mark and I show each other cat videos, funny memes, or ‘breaking news!’ stories while eating. Sometimes, we repeat what we shared the day before.

I often say that if Trivial Pursuit ever comes back in popularity and is elevated to a paying gig, he and I could buy matching Lamborghinis. The problem is that most people with access to a phone and the Internet will also have all this trivial knowledge.

But knowledge doesn’t equal wisdom. We all waste so much time pecking at our phones that we never notice the people around us.

Until it is too late.

And what difference will this trivial pursuit of knowledge make 100 years from now?

What difference will we, as individuals, make 100 years from now?

For a few months after she died, I visited my sister-in-law’s grave at lunchtime almost every day. I replaced the flowers according to the season, picked weeds, and called the cemetery office about the grass growing too high. I brought a chair, sat, talked to her, and left cards and solar lights. I did the same when my Daddy died and when my Mama passed. It made me feel physically close to them, even though I knew they weren’t there.

It’s been four years since Mama died. I don’t visit their graves as often. The Christmas decorations remained until February this year, and the solar lights and cards are long gone. I’m not sure what week the workers mow the grass anymore.

My Mama was in hospice at home for several months. There was a hospital bed in the den, and she mostly slept. Every day, the hospice nurse and Mama’s favorite caregivers would come. All said, ‘Today is the day.’

Daughters can beg God for more time and an end to suffering in the same breath. But the ending is not up to us.

During the last three weeks of my little Mama’s life, she refused to eat. She would spit out anything we gave her. I told her she could win any watermelon seed spitting contest in the world because she would violently spit out any food halfway across the room.

In her final week, she even refused liquids. I tried to give her tiny sips of water from a syringe to keep her mouth moist, but she would close her mouth tightly like a toddler.

Mama rallied just a few days before she passed, like many dying people do. She sat up in her wheelchair, with no leaning or slumping, and she was alert and happy. Her eyes sparkled and were a beautiful cobalt blue; I had never seen her eyes that color before. She watched her favorite shows, “Gunsmoke” and “Little House on the Prairie,” and ate a couple of chicken nuggets with her own hands. She had not been able, or willing, to feed herself in weeks, but that day she did. Not much, but enough to give me great hope.

I was so hopeful that the next day, as soon as they opened, I went to her favorite cafeteria and bought every meal I knew she liked to eat. But when I got to her house, she was back in her hospital bed, asleep. She never woke up and never ate anything again.

Sometimes life is incredibly cruel. A disease comes, hope rises and falls, and hearts break beyond understanding. But…we had that day. Her favorite caregiver (and angel in disguise) said my little Mama looked at me that day with such love and studied my face like she was trying to memorize me. I remember feeling a little uncomfortable because she was staring so intently at me with a soft smile. There was a sweetness in those moments that was almost too much this side of Heaven.

On the last night of her life, I took out a box of old cards and letters about holidays, vacations, and golf trips, mostly from people long gone, along with some from my brother and me. I read them to her until my voice gave out because I wanted to remind her of her great friendships and the legacy of love she left behind. She had one foot in Heaven and one on Earth, but I believe she heard every word.

Before they passed, Mama and Daddy bought a large plot in the cemetery. It is as lovely a spot as a gravesite can be, on a small hill surrounded by oak trees in a century-old cemetery designed as a park.

We will all be buried there eventually. Someone may bring flowers at first and bother the cemetery workers about the height of the grass. Maybe they will bring a chair, sit, and talk to relieve their grief. Eventually, the flowers won’t be replaced, the vases will fall over, and the colors will fade. The workers will scoop everything into a trash bag and continue mowing the grass.

There are no flowers on century-old graves.

But what difference will that make in 100 years?

I thought I would break down crying when my Mama died. I watched her caregivers change her into a clean nightgown so a stranger from the funeral home wouldn’t have to. I saw the funeral director cover her face with the sheet and wheel her body out of the home she and Daddy had lived in since I was 18 years old, for the last time.

But I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel anything. I just watched. Although her body was physically still in the room, it wasn’t her anymore. She had gone to Heaven.

I am sure I was numb, in denial, or just broken down from stress and exhaustion. But…I know where she was, and is, completely healthy, young, beautiful, and blissfully happy.

A hundred years from now, I won’t be here to remember where she is. Maybe no one will visit our graves, but we won’t be there anyway.

Love, not trivia from phones, or anything that seems so important now, is the only thing that lasts. It doesn’t die; it grows and remains into the next century and the next and the next and to eternity.

1 John 4:15-16 “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and his love is complete in us.”

Because all three knew Jesus, I have the hope and assurance of seeing them all again in Heaven.

What difference does that make 100 years from now?

All the difference in the world.