She loved

March 17, 2014

This week has been stressful.  Who am I kidding?  This year has been stressful.  Papaw died last February and we brought Momaw back to Covington.  We had tried for years to get Momaw & Papaw to sell their house on Mossy and come to Covington so we could look after them better.  That would’ve never made them happy though.  Their hearts were on the banks of Paint Creek…always had been.  And in our hearts, we knew that and never truly pressed the issue.  Momaw has continued to be solid in her mind throughout the last year.  This week she has been down with pneumonia and a kidney infection and she has been seeing Papaw and talking and dreaming and talking in her sleep.  It comforts me that she’s “back home” in her dreams.  It comforts me that her life was one of love that her subconscious returns there to comfort her.  Yesterday she was talking about it raining and the creek being up and the trees blowing down on the creek bank.  It’s sad to see those we love struggling with reality but it’s also comforting to know they are in that happy place.  

Yesterday Momaw’s nieces came to visit from West Virginia.  They are special nieces.  And their brother is a special nephew.  Their mother (Momaw’s sister) died when they were young.  Momaw served as a mother figure to them, so it’s a deeper bond than just an aunt.  Not only did Momaw serve as a mother figure to them, but Momaw’s own mother died when she was only 13 years old.  She has told me stories of her daddy working in the coal mines on the night shift.  Her younger sister used to have bad earaches and would scream and cry with her ears.  Momaw said there would be so many times when her daddy would come in from the mines and she would be awake and rocking her baby sister in the rocking chair in the living room to soothe her.  She had to grow up so fast. 

Losing parents, grandparents, aunts…that’s the way life is supposed to happen I suppose.  They are supposed to go on before us.  That doesn’t really make it any easier though.  Momaw is 93 and she’s had an amazing life.  Not wealth measured by a bank account, but by a much deeper kind.  She has said to me over the past year on many different occasions, “If Perry (Papaw) would’ve only known how things would turn out, he wouldn’t have left me.”  And the truth is, if he had any control of that, he wouldn’t have.  When Momaw’s time is up, they can surely write “broken heart” on her cause of death. 

She has expressed to me over the last year how she feels like a burden…how she wishes God would just go ahead and take her.  None of us want to see her suffer.  We know she’s ready to go.  She’s worn out.  She’s ready to go home.  I ache to think of her not being with us.  It hurts me to my core.  She was very much like a mother to me.  I have learned so many things from her.  Last week I felt like I had been punched in the gut when I thought I was losing her.  I became absolutely frantic.  There are still things I want to know.  I want to know how she made that amazing country fried steak and gravy.  I want to know what she would’ve done if she would’ve had a chance to go out in the world and do something for herself.  I want to know how she played some of the rotten cards she was dealt in life with complete grace and without becoming bitter.  I want to know how she always is able to think of others over herself.  I don’t know if I’m going to get a chance to ask her and I don’t know if I can even say the words to her if I do get a chance. 

She was ready to leave this earth the day Papaw left us.  She doesn’t understand why she is still here.  I told my cousins (her nieces) yesterday that what she doesn’t understand is that she is still serving a purpose on this earth.  She thinks she has nothing left to give.  She thinks she is (and has been) a burden…she doesn’t understand all of the people’s lives she has touched in the last year.  She has no idea.  She doesn’t know that I talk about her incessantly.  She doesn’t realize that people who don’t even know her have been touched by her.  She doesn’t know how she has touched her caregivers and those who have come in to bless her and leave blessed. 

This song by Jeff & Sheri Easter has played in my mind this week

Someone once asked

If only you knew
How short life would be
What would you do?
What would they say
When God called you home?
What would they engrave
Once you were gone?

I hope they would see
What I've done in my life
Who I've cared for
And how I survived
I hope they'd say

She loved more than anything else
She loved with all of her heart
She loved everyone she believed in
She loved...oh she loved

She loved the Lord
And served all her life
A sacrificial mother
And an honorable wife
She gave all she had
And through every trial
Made life much sweeter
Because of her smile

Everyone will see
What she's done in her life
Who she cared for
And how she survived
I'm sure they'd say

She loved more than anything else
She loved with all of her heart
She loved everyone she believed in
She loved...oh she loved

And indeed she did.

Click here for "She Loved" video

March 22, 2014

10 am

I was supposed to be cleaning the basement this morning.  I’m trying to carve out a workout room.  I need somewhere to go when I’m not eating doughnuts.  I’m trying to declutter and I ran across a box that I have been avoiding going through for a year.  It had old records and 8 track tapes that belonged to my grandparents and I didn’t want to toss them if they were worth anything, so I’ve just had them in a box in the basement for a year avoiding them.  I opened it up today and found pictures under the records.  And I found things like DARE graduation programs and All Star programs that my dad had mailed to them over the years.  Instead of cleaning my basement, I made a much bigger mess and went through all of those things.

My dad called.  Every day this week I have expected that dreaded call that Momaw has been called home.  Thankfully he was just checking to see if Riley and I were feeling ok—Riley was sick Friday and I thought I was getting it yesterday.  I was relieved to learn that was all the call was about and hopped in the shower.

11 am

Dad called again.  My heart sank.  I knew what it was before I even picked up the phone.

Momaw is soaring with the angels now and I’m somewhere in the middle of a completely shattered heart and at peace knowing that she is having one heck of reunion with her family and the rest of the saints.

She hung on for one year and one month from the time she lost Papaw.  I have talked to so many people who have been touched by her in just the last year.  Her nurse, who has become so dear to all of us, prayed with her this morning and she passed away 15 minutes later.  The Hospice worker told Dad that she had told one of the staff to go read Psalm 42 (still caring for others even at the very end.)  Her life was one of purpose and dedication and selflessness and I’m honored to have had her in my life for almost 37 years.  

I wish all of you all could’ve met her, but I hope through something I have told you about her or a picture you have seen, that you felt her beautiful spirit, even if you didn’t have the pleasure of meeting her. 

And p.s.  I asked her this week how to make gravy and she looked at me like I head three heads and exclaimed, “You mean you can’t make gravy???!”