On this day one year ago, my mother died in a house fire. She apparently was cooking chicken when a grease fire started. She was unable to get out of the house. Did she try to fight the fire? Did she fall? Did the fire grow so quickly she had no time? I do not know. I do not know why she barley made it 10 feet from the stove before landing on the ground and then dying of cardiac arrest due to smoke inhalation and congestive heart failure.
In many ways, I am still in shock. I'm still processing this as reality. Only in August did the heavy sadness sink in. When the days grew closer to the one-year mark of our last phone conversation and the date I last saw her, I could hardly believe it . . . as if I sorta expected to be able to call her or see her on my next visit. No one should go a year without talking to her mother. Right? But I have many, many years left of not talking to her.
My mother is dead.
And when we decided to start the adoption process again, my heart cringed more deeply. I couldn't tell my mother. She doesn't know another grand is on the way.
In these moments of sadness, I also reel from another reality . . . thinking about the day when Anna Zane aches for me, yearns to tell me, wants me to know, but I can't respond because I'm no longer on this planet. It rips a mother's heart. I'll be in heaven, griping Jesus' by the lapels, saying, "My baby needs me. My baby is hurting."
But I suppose He's already responded:
"What father among you, if his son ask for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"
1 comment:
I don't know how you manage. I can't imagine it for myself. Unfortunately, I had to at least briefly imagine it for my own children. But it is hard. I hope you were able to do something special in her memory today.
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