I've been blessed to have my mother for 54 years. We have been especially close in the last fifteen-ish years since she moved out to the Texas hill country so she could live closer to us. Often as close as a guesthouse in our backyard. And sometimes she drove me nuts. However, God in His grace allowed us to have mother with us so me and the girls could really enjoy her because He knew we'd all look back on this time with great fondness and some amazing memories.
Raised an only child by a very domineering sort of mother, she really came into her own once she hit middle age. Granny's passing over two decades ago freed her to travel and spend more time with friends/family. And she did. She got to attend school events for all four of the grandkids, from elementary all the way to college graduation for the oldest. She celebrated holidays and birthdays with us. She traveled in the US and abroad. The list goes on and on, and she loved every minute of it.
I don't want this post to sound like my mother's obituary since she's still with us. But the cancer is winning, because evil always does in this earthly life. However, I praise Jesus that Satan and death don't win in the end. Though I'm sad to even think about this impending loss of such an important and beloved person in my life, I take comfort in my faith because I know I'll see mother again in our eternal home one day.
At the nursing home, I've brought things from her house to decorate mother's room and there is a little corner where I placed her precious pug stuff. As the cancer has spread throughout her body, the pain medicines have been ramped up to deal with it. She tells me almost every day when I go and sit with her that she hears her pugs. Today she told me she can feel Max resting his chin on her knee like he always used to do. She made the tough decision to have Max and his sister Ruby put to sleep last year when her health started to decline. The pugs were already 12 and in failing health, too. She enjoyed it when I'd bring our dogs over to visit, but it just wasn't the same as her darling furbaby pugs.
Mother also told me today that she has been seeing granny in her dreams the past week. I asked her how granny seemed, and she said happy to see her. I can't help but wonder if she's seeing the pugs and granny because they've come to help usher her from this life to the next. God is kind and merciful, loving us more than we can fathom with our limited human intellects. And so I can't help but think He would send sweet pets and her beloved mother to her in her final days. As God reaches out His hand to her, as He does to all of us when we are in need, I hope she takes it with joy and peace as He welcomes her home.
Knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord... I prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.
2 Corinthians 5:6,8
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