Cindy Lange-Kubick

Sister Michelle Mohr wants to tell another story.

And no one wants to stop her.

Not her mother.

Not the nurse from Saint Elizabeth Hospice.

Not the nuns sitting in a row of chairs at the foot of her bed, red-eyed but smiling in their gray and white habits. Sister Michelle has been talking for almost two hours now. Wearing her soft pink cap. Touching the rosary beads tucked into the folds of her blue blanket.

When her mouth gets dry, Sister Paula Jean brings her water in a paper cup and Sister Michelle sips through a plastic straw.

Are you getting tired, Sister Michelle?

Do you want to stop?

No.

Sister Michelle wants to talk. She wants to talk about hospice.

She wants to talk about dying.

She wants to talk about living her final days here in the big community room at the Marian Sisters Motherhouse, the last leaves of autumn falling outside her window.

But she wants to tell this story, too. The one about Sister Serena.

She wants to tell about the time the novice from Kansas wanted to see a volleyball match. The K-State Wildcats versus the Lady Huskers.

"Do nuns ever go to volleyball games?" the novice asked Sister Michelle.

"Yes, sometimes."

"Do you think we could get tickets?"

Have faith, Sister Michelle told her.

"If Mary can have Jesus turn that water into wine she can help us get volleyball tickets."

Sister Michelle's blue eyes laugh behind her glasses.

They got the tickets.

The nuns in a row laugh, too, like an audience at a good play.

That is Sister Michelle, they say. Bringing them joy.

And this is the cloistered area, a place reserved by canon law just for the sisters. A place where they can be safe, free to meditate and draw closer to Jesus, away from the influence of the world.

They have opened up this sacred place to outsiders so Sister Michelle can die here.

Her mother sleeps in the room next door.

Sarah Yokel comes four times a week from Saint Elizabeth Hospice. Hospice volunteers deliver medicine and cheer.

Sister Michelle is 44. In August, five years after she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer — synovial sarcoma — her doctor gave her a choice.

She could have more chemo. It would slow the spread of the tumors, but it wouldn't cure her.

Or she could be made comfortable until her death.

She knew right away she did not want the chemo. "Chemo and I don't get along."

But it took her a week to find peace with the idea of dying.

"It's what I like to call my agony in the garden."

After that, her heart opened.

She realized she had been given a gift.

"It was an opportunity that I had been given," she says. "A time for preparation."

When hospice came, it was like Christmas. They brought the bed with the buttons that make it go up and down. The wheelchair. The medicine that takes the pain away.

They helped the sisters learn to care for her so she could stay in the community she loved.

She has been given so many gifts, says Sister Michelle.

She invited the sisters to come see her, if they wished, one at a time.

"Have I done anything I need to apologize for?" Sister Michelle asked each one. "Does there need to be forgiveness on either side?"

She makes prayer books and fills the pages with her favorite prayers.

"Don't worry," she says to her visitors. "I don't say them all every day."

There is a picture of a boy named Nathan on the first page. She never met him. He had a brain tumor and died six years ago.

She reads the prayer he wrote.

Lord, take my soul to that awesome place so I will see your holy face …

Sister Paula Jean brings her the prayer book. She was taking classes to become a nurse when her friend went into hospice. During a week-long break she cared for Sister Michelle full time. And when it was time to go back, she couldn't. She wanted to stay and care for Sister Michelle.

"When that happened, I was overwhelmed by love," says Sister Michelle. "I thought they just did that in the Bible."

See? she says. She is surrounded by people who love her.

She is not afraid to die.

From the time she was a little girl, her mother taught her there was a God. And there was a heaven. And she would go there one day.

She's going to a place she knows through prayer, she says. A place filled with what every one is searching for: Love.

"I think that's what most people are suffering from — lack of love. I think when we die we are going to meet love.

"True love," says Sister Michelle, "for the very first time."

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.