Mom-in-Love

Happy first-year-in-heaven anniversary, Mom. You finally made it! We all really miss you!

What I would give to have one more sit-down with this gracious and feisty woman — my Mom-in-love! She was always so good to me.

We don’t drive by Countryside Care Center without feeling a magnetic pull to turn in, and then we remember … she’s gone. But she’s gone to a better place — a place where she longed to be her last few years — sitting at the feet of Jesus — or digging in some celestial garden somewhere! When she lived here, she made it her life’s mission to rid the world of every single weed she passed.

No weeds where she is now! How that must please her!!!

I miss our Bible studies at the center with her lady friends. But she was always the first to show up and always had her Bible opened to the passage that she had diligently studied ahead. She also looked forward to church service every Sunday at Countryside and was a faithful attender. She won the hearts of everyone there!

I miss our “spa days,” too, when I would do her nails with Color Street strips. Oh, how she loved them … and, according to her, was frequently complimented for her pretty nails by the nurses. I don’t get a manicure today without thinking of her!

I’ll never forget the time Mom purchased herself some of those magnetic eyelashes from a catalog when she was around 92 years old. One of the funniest memories I have with her was when I tried putting those crazy things on her! We laughed so hard, we cried! I mean, literal tears! We never did get those blasted things to work!

I also remember a trip we took to Philadelphia together in 2020 to the Republican National Convention. The two of us held up a plane at one of our layovers … long story that I won’t go into here, but we ran as fast as we could, jumping over and/or crawling under roped-off areas to get to our gate. We huffed and puffed our way onto the plane and scurried down the aisle among glares from the other passengers. Mom kept her head down and kept moving. I felt compelled to announce to everyone that it “wasn’t our fault!” When we finally got to our seats, she plopped down and whispered to me with tears of suppressed laughter, “If it wasn’t our fault, then whose fault WAS it???”

The memories abound with this dear woman. Suffice it to say, she was one of the greatest blessings of my life!