Sometimes, despite the best of intentions, life happens and plans need to be put on hold. Last fall, I’d intended to post at least once a week about my favorite Christian authors and the books they’d recently written. I interviewed over a dozen authors at the International Christian Retail Show and had been given/sent a number of books to read and review.

But my family needed me. My mom, who was 90+, was in terrible pain and had to have MRIs and endoscopies and exams one after the other. She was even hospitalized for a while. When all that was over, she still had pain. We finally discovered, after she’d had problems for over 30 years, that she was gluten-intolerant. Changing to a gluten-free diet solved the problems and most of the pain. She had pain with her back and shoulders, but injections of steroids seemed to help. Then Memorial Day morning she had my husband wake me up – she had excruciating pain in the heart area – we 911’d her to the hospital where after several X-rays the operating premise was that the falls she’d had over the past year had resulted in many hairline fractures in her back and ribs and that she wasn’t going to get better.

When I fell apart while talking with the hospital social worker who was trying to help, she suggested that I talk with Hospice as they can give pain meds that other sources can’t. They agreed to take Mom on. We brought her home on June 10th. She was in a lot of pain, but the morphine they could give her helped mitigate it. However, we had to keep giving her more frequent and ever increasing doses. On June 14th, Mom peacefully passed into Heaven in her sleep. God is good: that had been her desire – to be able to sleep away and not be in pain.

I am so grateful to Cranberry Hospice and the private-duty nurses who helped care for Mom. They were life-savers for me and made her last days ever so much more comfortable.

This weekend we take her ashes to Princeton, MO, to be buried next to my dad. I smile when I think of the two of them walking hand and hand in Heavenly bodies, together again.

This is a poem I wrote upon Mom’s passing:

She was gracious and charming
She had a good life.
She brought up a daughter,
She was a good wife.

They worked hard, and played hard,
They always had fun.
Their family, their friends,
They loved every one.

Her husband, my father,
Slept away years ago.
She mourned him, and missed him,
And too wanted to go

She lived with her daughter,
And a son she held dear;
But her body was tired,
She’d lived many years.

She was soundly asleep;
Her breathing was even.
Between one breath and the next,
She slipped into heaven.

Reunited with Daddy in Heaven above,
Hugging and laughing – enjoying the Lord.
Talking and greeting the ones that she’d loved,
Rejoicing and praising our wonderful God!

I loved them so dearly,
Parting’s sweet pain.
What I’ve lost on Earth,
Surely is Heaven’s gain.

Good memories I have
To hold close in my heart,
One day I’ll be with them,
Never to part.

Grace and peace are my portion,
From my God above
Who walks with my parents,
And sends me their love.

Rest in Peace, Mom.