My mother was 99 years old, just six months short of a century of living on this earth. She had lived in Texas in a wonderful nursing facility for the past five years.
I had made plans over two months ago to fly from my home in GA to visit her and my sister. The week before I was to leave Mother had a stroke and was paralyzed on her left side. By the time I got here, she was unresponsive, but I pray that somehow she knew I was there. On her last day, and we knew the end was near, we played a favorite CD of hymns she loved, and I sat and sang to her.
Mother was a lover of music, and that is one of the gifts she gave me. She was also a lover of the written word, and I can't tell you how many clippings she had stored in several boxes of things she liked that she saw in newspapers or magazines. She also loved to regale the grandchildren, great grandchildren, and any other child who came into her presence with delightful stories.
She was a great cook, and she loved nothing so much as preparing a meal for anyone who happened to be at the house when she started cooking, or she would cook and call different family members to come eat with them.
Mother touched the lives of all she met. I wish that I could relate some of the things people have told us over the years of something she did for them.
When we reached the nursing facility this morning, there were at least six attendants standing around her bed, crying. They loved her as much as she did them. The entire time we were there, staff members from the laundry attendants to the Director of the home came by to tell us how much they loved her and would miss her.
We were so blessed to have had such a wonderful mother and to have had her for 99 years. I wish everyone in the world could have had such a mother.
Thank you for giving me a forum to write of my sadness, yet it is hard to be terribly sad, because she so often told us not to grieve when she died, because we could know that she was right where she wanted to be. I just thought this might be a change from all the frustration and aggravation that is going on right now.