Fear of losing the people I love!

I guess that’s how you know you’re getting older when you attend more funerals than weddings!

Just two years ago I held my mother’s hand, keeping watch over her pulse as my four sisters and I stood around her bedside singing her into eternity. My mama and I had a rocky relationship during my teen years so I felt privileged to be able to give back to her what she gave me, GRACE. Alongside my wonderful sisters, we worked together to do for her what she had done for us all our lives. We cared for her, both Physically, Emotionally & Spiritually.

I was given the extra blessing of being able to give mama her last shower. It was a sacred moment. To wash her hair, to gently dry her weak and feeble body, so longing for privacy yet graciously allowing me to enter that place she tried so hard to hold onto.

It was two weeks before Christmas as the family held vigil, singing “Silent Night” that mama stopped fighting! If you knew my mama you would know, this was not an easy thing for her! She WAS a fighter! She NEVER gave up!! But that day, as we joined in the last chorus ‘Sleep in Heavenly Peace” my mama’s beautiful, bright, earthy light, went out. But that wasn’t the end! No, it wasn’t the END! I believe that the minute she passed from this life a million candles were lit in Heaven! They illuminated the path as she entered the gates of her heavenly home, the one she so longed to see! There in that warm glow of eternity, she was greeted by those who had gone before her. My dad, my grandfathers, my grandmothers, all of her siblings, all of her grandchildren and great grandchildren and many more whose lives she had poured into for over ninety years!

You see, my mama never gave in to her fears! She did things that were scary because she knew who her provider and protector was! Oh, she was fearful at times, but she did it anyway, knowing that her girls were watching. And we were! I was!

Today, as I reflect on yet another family member’s fight with a deadly disease, I am comforted and assured that I have a purpose on this earth and when my life is over it will begin again in eternity! No more illness, no more tears, no more dying!!