Many have asked how I am doing with the loss of my mom last week. In a nutshell, the loss is more traumatic this week, as last week was filled with getting everything together for her Memorial service and burial and I didnt really have the time to let it set in. I cant even begin to imagine the loss my dad is feeling.
So.......I have decided to let this be the place I write, in the the hopes of getting at least some of the grief out. This whole week is dedicated to my mom and the memory of her.
My mom was, as Deb put it last night, "easy". After Deb and I got married, she never once got into our business, was always from the start completely accepting of Debbie as a part of the family. She was sensible, fair, level, completely honest. As Deb again said, "She was a wonderful mother-in-law....as good as there is."
Looking back, I realize that my mom lived a life with much pain. When she was 6 years old, a boy put a pencil in her ear, piercing the eardrum, affecting her hearing for life. When she was 8 or 9, her parents divorced. Her family lived in the backwoods of S. La and around that time mom got 'double pneumonia'. The doctor said that her chance of survival was almost none, yet, with the help of her oldest sister who was now like a mom to her, she survived death's door the first time.
At 16, she left home with her youngest sister, Nettie, in search of a better life. She met my dad when she was 19 in New Orleans, where she worked at the Fairmont Hotel and Felix's (still there by Cafe DuMonde...) during the war. My dad was in the French Airforce and during the time he was back in France, she as hit by a car, flipping over it, then the next week, was shot in the abdomen by a crazed woman shooting wildly from a street balcony.
For hours they operated, but the bullet had lodged in her spine and to remove it would have been too dangerous. She was listed as a "Jane Doe', as no one knew her name. When she woke up a few weeks later, she didnt know where she was or what had happened, but described a huge pair of wings that covered the entire ceiling of the room she was in. She knew enough to know it was an angel of the Lord sent to watch over her.
Though the doctors did not know her name, God did, and that was what mattered.
Mom once again recovered. Not only did she live, but she walked, something they said she would never do. She met my dad 6 months later at the train station, having been stood up by her sisters against a post so my dad wouldnt immediately see her in a wheelchair.
Another thing the doctors told her was that if she did live and did walk, one thing for certain was that she would not be able to have children, as the bullet had really messed up her lower abdominal area.
Mom would not take that answer.
As she told me many times over the years, "The doctors are not God..." "I HAD to live-God wanted me to have children!" Before me she lost 2 babies. She had me at 40 years of age, then my sis at 45.
Thanks mom for being a fighter and not quiting...!
Just writing this, I can see how the enemy was out to destroy her, to keep her from having children, the very thing God had put in her heart to do. Even as I write, a sense of 'destiny' fills my heart to completely fulfill God's intent and design for my life for His glory, period.
.......and Mom not only had children; she raised them,..... then saw her grandchildren!
For those of you reading along, thanks for sharing the road with me. It's good to get it out....
Much love,
PB