My twin, my Mama & myself...after helping Mama conquer a 5K in between chemo treatments!
The 25th of July (yesterday) makes 9 months! 9 months since mama left this world and passed over into Glory! 9 months since we held her hand last and told her we love her! A bit more than 9 months since we last heard her voice. Since she last told us she loved us and since she last hugged us. OH the thought of it! The finality of it all still hits hard some days. How can it be so? Grief is such a difficult journey yet there's such beauty to be found in it all.
And Oh the beauty we found in the last chapter we closed recently! A few weeks ago, my family celebrated my grandma's 85th birthday...which required a trip South...to Mama's...one last time! We knew it would be the last time at Mama's because the house has officially sold. So bittersweet. I'll admit that I really thought the "bitter" part of it all would overwhelm the "sweet" but I was so wrong! None of us quite knew what to expect. We knew we would be sleeping on air mattresses and couches (since most everything else had been cleared out) and although it sounded uncomfortable, the thought of NOT staying in the house with our Dad for the weekend wasn't even an option! So stay we did. Backing up quite a bit...all during the cancer journey, we kept saying that God had "pockets of delight" for us in the midst of the pain. We knew he did, but we had to look for them! This time tho...oh how hard to look for those pockets of delight when your heart is breaking in pieces. The thought of staying in that house for 1 last weekend...the house that held such beautiful memories...the house that was home to mama for so many years...years of Christmas traditions in that house (where our firstborn celebrated her first Christmas), crying over burnt (charred) turkey 1 Thanksgiving in that house (literally...LOL), laughing together, crying together, swinging on the front porch together, tractor rides, caroling in the neighborhood...letting go of all of the beautiful memories. Or so it seemed.
But guess what? The unexpected happened yet again! Ellie Holcomb has a song called "Find You Here". (The story behind it is beautiful, and so is she!) A precious soul shared it with my twin when mama was passing and God gave my twin and I the most beautiful moment together at a ladies' conference where Ellie sang that song. We held each other and cried. It was such a "pocket of delight" in midst of our intense grief! We found God in so many of the moments of Mom's cancer journey and even in the end-of-life stages and also in her death. That may sound crazy to some, but to us, we knew we could not have survived the loss of Mama without God's comfort and showing us that He was (and still is) with us thru each stage of the grief. His presence has been our sustainer thru it all. So...back to a few weeks ago...we found him there, yet again. We did not expect the sweetness...only the difficulty of the closure, but oh what sweetness came that weekend!
As my twin, myself, my stepsis and sisinlaw sat around a small table that sat in the same spot that Mama's hospice bed was months ago...the spot where we each took turns caring for Mama's dying body, the spot where we each took turns saying goodbye to the woman who mean the world to us and who's role nobody can ever fill, the spot where a new ache that we had never known formed inside our soul...that spot...we sat there..the 4 of us remembering Mama and laughing at all the crazy memories then and mostly at all the chaos since then. We had no idea what a crazy journey we were in for, but God knew. And He also knew that almost 9 months later, we would sit around that little table and laugh together and it would bring such healing to our aching hearts! Earlier that same day, we had celebrated our Grandma (my Mama's mama) at the same church where my Mama's Celbration of Life took place. Those same chairs we sat in and sobbed and also listened to people share what Mama meant to them and how she had touched each of their lives. Then we stood on the stage where we sang for Mama's service and sang yet again. We sang some of the sweetest old hymns...this time with our Grandma beside us...singing along with us. You see many years ago, she began the tradition of singing together thru hard times and taught her children how to harmonize and share their gifts with others. So her favorite thing to do is sit around with her family and sing. So sing we did, yall! And what a sweet afternoon it was. Nothing could have brought more healing and balm to our aching souls then to sit and sing with the beautiful soul that brought our Mama into this world. We knew we were heading South to celebrate our Grandma, but we didn't really expect to "Find him there". Ellie Holcomb words it so well! Here are just a few of the lyrics. If you haven't had a chance to hear it, please click here and read the story behind it and give it a listen.
"It's not the news that any of us hoped that we would hear. It's not the road we would have chosen, no.
The only thing that we can see is darkness up ahead...But You're asking us to lay our worry down and sing a song instead
[Chorus]
And I didn't know I'd find You here
In the middle of my deepest fear, but
You are drawing near
You are overwhelming me, with peace
So I'll lift my voice and sing
You're gonna carry us through everything
You are drawing near
You're overwhelming all my fears, with peace..."
Oh what a wonderful God we serve! We didn't know we would "Find You Here", yet we did! And WE STILL DO...over and over again. What a loving God He is to us all...even (especially) in the hard! Couldn't do the grief journey without Him!
Carol