We love you, Mom!
July 23 is fast approaching – the 20-year anniversary of our Mom’s (Jimmie Joan) home going, or promotion to Heaven. She was in the hospital only five short weeks and never returned home. She died of Acute Leukemia (AML).
It barely seems possible that it’s been 20 years already – on one hand it feels like she’s been gone forever, and on the other, like it was just yesterday.
Today my sister (Karen) and I plan to get together and celebrate her life here on earth. We might visit the neighborhood grocery/deli my Mom and Dad shopped in (sometimes daily), buy a lemon bar (one of our favorite recipes of Mom’s), tour our old neighborhood, and pool where we took swimming lessons, etc.., Whatever we do, or wherever we end up, the two of us will be together reminiscing the “good ole days.” Our brother, Lonnie, who lives in California will be with us in spirit too. We wish he were here too in bodily form so the three of us could share together.
We rarely visit the location where her ashes are stored—mostly because as believers in God, we KNOW she is really not there but is rejoicing in Heaven where there is no more pain or tears. Some do regularly visit a gravesite, and that’s fine.
Mom, we miss you terribly. Even 20 years later, it hurts to write this and tears come to my eyes as I pen this tribute. Your loved ones still feel robbed/cheated because you were taken from us at such a young age of 58. But dwelling on that fact does us no earthly good. We rest on the fact that God is too wise to make mistakes and too good to be unkind. God is God and we are not.
Lovingly thinking of you,
Children:
Teresa (Steve), Karen (Darryl), Lonnie
Grandchildren:
Andrew (Bethany) and Amanda
Lindsay (Andy), Ashley, Bethany, Jeremy
Great-Grandchildren:
Liberty and Elijah
Caiden