Today is the first anniversary of my precious mother's release from the pain and sin of this world, when she traveled to her eternal home. Ah yes, the traveling. Boy oh boy did mother love a trip. It was a whole process with her, filled with anticipation and excitement. Booking the trip. Packing her suitcase. Waking up early to hit the road the day it started. London, Alaska or her old hometown of Sour Lake. It didn't matter the destination. She eagerly looked forward to the sites, people and wonderful memories she'd make. And so I have to think it was the same way for her as she anticipated her trip from this life to the next. There was undoubtedly some fear and anxiety of the unknowns, and yet there was that same excitement to be with her Heavenly Father. And hopefully peace, too.
One thing that has stuck with me about mother's final few weeks, as the pain wore away her struggle to stay here and I imagine made her resolve to anticipate her home going, was seeing her old pugs Max and Ruby, even though they had died the year before. I think the pugs especially brought her comfort because she'd get this smile on her face and happy lilt in her voice when she'd comment on hearing and seeing them. I believe God directed His angels to bring the pugs back into her world where she alone could see and hear them again as a bit of a sneak peak of the homecoming with those she loved who had gone before.
Last month, I arrived at Bible study leaders meeting and remembered there was some rain in the forecast. Since I had walked around to get my purse and tote bag out of the front passenger seat, I reached into the door's cubby and pulled out the umbrella I always kept there for mother to use. After our meeting ended, I trekked back out to my SUV and went around to the passenger side again to load my things and return the umbrella to its spot. The clouds had been swept away by then and the sun glinted off something shiny in that cubby. I reached in and pulled out mother's emerald ring. I was immediately taken back to that place of pain and loss, quietly crying in the church's parking lot as waves of grief rolled over me.
The first thing I wanted to do was call mother and tell her I found it. As her final decline began when the cancer continued to beat back any treatments thrown at it, mother's weight slipped away. At some point she realized she had lost this ring as her fingers became too small for it. She asked her home health caregiver to search the guesthouse looking for it, but became resigned to it being gone forever.
Today I reflect on this object lesson I believe the Lord sent me about loss. The reminder that mother isn't gone forever, but rather just gone from here. She has traveled to a place where there's no more grief or pain, and I'll join her someday. And yet it doesn't stop me from wanting to walk across the back yard to mother's guesthouse and catch her up with what's going on in my world. How the girls are doing. Ask her the best way to make dumplings from scratch because I can't find the frozen ones in my local supermarket. Pet her old pugs that shed all over the place. Instead, I'm resting in the knowledge that mother was a believer and the Lord called her home just as He'll do the same for me one day. That all is not lost, but rather peace can be found because of God, His son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus said... Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. John 16:22
For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live! Ezekiel 18:32
If we died with Him, we will also live with Him. 2 Timothy 2:11
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die." John 11:25-26
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