Snapshots Spanning Fifty Years

No introduction, no conclusion.  Perhaps someday I will think of how to frame these word pictures.

            April 1962:  Excited to share the big news in first grade Show and Tell, I started to explain that my grandma had died over the weekend.  No one was more shocked than I was when I burst into tears and could not stop crying.  My teacher sent for my eight-year-old sister to comfort me.

            November 1962:  Six months later, Grandpa died.  We kids were not allowed to attend the funeral, but we were at the funeral dinner held afterwards in his big house in the country.  Happy to see so many of our relatives, I thought to myself, “It would be a perfect day if Grandpa were here.”  But I also knew that Grandpa and Grandma were together in heaven.  Sometimes I talked to Grandpa about how much I missed him.

            December 1974:  Cousin Dee died in a car wreck her senior year in high school, my sophomore year in college.  Just a week before her death, she had given her life to Christ at a youth crusade.       

June 1975:  The next summer, my father died.  It felt strange to think of him gone for good since he had been gone from our lives for so many years.  His life had been one big train wreck, but I still hoped that he came to Jesus at the very end.

            October 2009:  I knew my sister was going to die soon.  After all, I had been with her for the past two months since the surgery that revealed inoperable cancer.  Though there had already been many tears, I howled with grief the day after.  My solace had come the day she died, when I sensed her passing by, her young self again, flying off to heaven.

            May 2013:  Mom went quietly in the night, less than a week after hospice care had started for her in the memory care facility where she lived.  Still, I was unprepared for the hollowed-out grief that occupied my very soul.  Why had I not realized just how much I loved her before she was gone?