Bye Meemaw.

My mom died unexpectedly early Saturday morning.  She was alive and laughing the night before when I visited her.  I asked,  "Mom, how are you feeling."  She said, "Fantastic."  She said it, however, with that kind of false cheer she always used when she didn't want us to worry about her. She was 76 years old.  She and my father, who will turn 80 the day before my 54th birthday in July, have been married for 59 years, through sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for better or worse.

It hasn't hit me that she is dead yet, and I'm not sure when it will, but when it does, I don't know how I will be able to tolerate it.  The idea of this saint of a woman being gone, her voice silent from our lives, is something I cannot even begin to get my head around yet.  I don't know that I ever will either.  My mom would do anything for anybody, just like my grandmother before her.  She lived for her family, and every time a grandkid or a great-grandkid would visit, her eyes would sparkle with pure, unadulterated joy.

We went to the funeral home yesterday and picked out a cover for the little program they print out for the funeral.  It was an eagle.  My mom loved all things having to do with nature, and she painted landscapes and scenes with woodland animals everywhere.  We all thought the eagle was perfect.  When I got home, I was sitting on the couch and watching the clouds rush by.  One of them looked like a perfect eagle racing across the sky.  I think God has given my mom wings of eagles, and He was letting me know that.

I know all of my agnostic or atheistic friends will think this silly or perhaps some illusion brought upon by grief.  I don't care.  I can remember my mom telling me about a time when she was a young mother, and she and dad were poor as church mice.  My brother was in diapers, the cloth kind, and they needed to be washed.  However, Mom had no laundry detergent, and she prayed in despair.  In the mail she received a sample of -- you guessed it -- laundry detergent.  I remember her telling me once, "Son, I've read the Bible several times.  What it all boils down to is this, Love God will all your heart and love your neighbor.  That's all there is too it."  Not more than a dozen times in my entire lifetime have I heard her say a cross (no pun intended) word about anyone.

I don't think I can write anymore tonight.  I'm just wrung out.  Pray for my family and me.