Visits from Heaven

My mom has been gone for nearly a year now. I miss her, but I’m also happy for her. She gets to live in Heaven. I was with her when she passed on after her long time of suffering. She was on her death bed for about three weeks. During this time, while she could still talk, she talked about my dad who had died years before, her gramma on her dad’s side whom I never met, and her mother. They all came to her in her last days. She talked to them and about them while I was in the room. She cried out for her mom when she was in pain and told the Hospice nurse that she was standing behind her. She said her gramma was in the room on a different occasion, and she kept telling us that she had to go soon, that Dad wanted her to go with him. She hung on as long as she could because she was worried about her children. “What if y’all need me?” I promised her I would take care of my brothers who are both older than me. They might’ve laughed at that, but we all know that men need a female in their lives to set them straight once in a while :), and of course, I’m the right person for that job. To be completely honest, my brothers aren’t perfect-ha ha. They make me crazy each in their own way, but I love them, and I will always be there for them-even though my oldest brother dropped me on the steps when I was little, and the other one hit me with my dad’s dually when we were teens. (For the non-country folk out there, a dually is a big pick up truck with dual wheels.) Ahhhhh, the good ole’ days….somehow I survived.

My brothers and I share something that no one else can share with us, memories of growing up in our crazy family. We have a sister too, but that’s another story for another time, if ever. Anyway, I digress. I was holding my mom’s hand when she passed. My sister-in-law was holding her other hand. I was so glad to be with her in her final moments as I watched her slowly move from this side to the other. Once she’d stopped breathing, a few minutes later, I looked over at her. She looked younger somehow. Her cheeks were pink again, and she seemed to be glowing.

On the morning of her funeral, I was sitting in the kitchen that was once hers. It was quiet and peaceful, and I was drinking my coffee. I could feel her around me, at peace finally, and happy. I asked her to send me a sign that she was near. A song had been running through my head all morning: “I Need Thee Every Hour.” I decided to listen to some church hymns, so I opened up my music on my phone. It was not the first song on my playlist, nor had I hit shuffle, but “I Need Thee Every Hour” was the song that played first. Maybe I was being stalked by the internet, or maybe it was my mom telling me that she was here, with me, just as I’d suspected. Since then, my mom comes to my dreams quite often. She doesn’t say anything, she’s just somewhere in the background looking peaceful, as if to say, I’m still here, just like always.