Fifteen years ago today, my precious mom left us unexpectedly. She had been ill for only five days, refusing to go to the hospital as she had no one to watch my brother. He has cerebral palsy and always had lived at home with her. She was fiercely protective of him. She died of multiple pulmonary emboli…blood clots in the lungs. If she would have had proper medical care, I believe she would have lived longer. Then again, perhaps it was her time to go. Either way, as those of you know who have lost your mother, it is a dreadfully difficult thing to go through.

I posted some pictures on my Instagram account (@GriefMaven) yesterday and the setting is such that they also posted here. I entered them in Apple’s photo contest for pictures shot with an iPhone. One of the pictures is of my grandma’s house, which was also my mom’s house growing up. I believe she was a teenager when they moved there. Before that, they lived in the old home place back on the hill.

Mom and her siblings walked down off that hill every day and from the time they went to high school, rode the bus twenty-eight miles each way, then walked back up the hill when they got home. It was a hardscrabble life for Mom and her family as they lived off the land…six kids, Grandma and Pop-Pop, an old milk cow and a horse to plow. Pop-Pop worked in the shop down the road…welding, fixing things, delivering pop, working on trucks for the oil fields.

We went to the farm yesterday. I sat quietly in the living room, listening to the old house speak to me in a language I have heard since my earliest days. My eyes ran over the old linoleum on the floor, its pattern looking like carpet, faded and worn through in places. The sheers on the windows let the pale light from late afternoon highlight the dust motes in the air. The familiar smell of wood and old cotton and gas stove comforting me as I remembered so many days shared with her there.

My friend Sharon, who is also a newly discovered distant cousin, saw the picture of Grandma’s house here yesterday and said it brought tears to her eyes. She said it made her think of an oldtimey tune her mother used to sing as she did her household chores. She posted a link, but I’m going to share it here as well. In honor of Wanda Belle…my mom, my friend, my champion. I loved her so…I miss her still. 

Precious Memories…how they linger…

❤️

“”Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.””

Proverbs 31:29 ESV