It is hard to believe a year has passed since I received “that” call.  Maybe you received “that” call just today, yesterday, last week, or six years ago.  You know the kind of call that knocks the wind out of your lungs. Doesn’t matter if you’re expecting it or not, nothing can prepare you for the tightening of lungs.

Torrential tears down poured from my face.  Time is fleeting. In my young naivenes I don’t think I truly realized just how quickly time rolls away.  Fleeting.  Just like, “the blink of an eye” they would say.  “Here today, gone tomorrow”.  None of this meant anything to the depths of my core until after I had children.  I have slowly started understanding the value of time and just how fast it goes.  So hard to believe my littles are almost four and two.   

The day I got that call it was as though my heart began to hemorrhage.  I couldn’t stop the bleeding.  The finality of knowing I’d never see her face, hear her voice, touch her skin, smell her sweet scent, or watch her feeble hands crochet was unbearable. 

I wondered what it would be like from here on out.  It has been much of the same just without her smile.  Funny thing is I smile more now when I think about her than when she was with us during her last few months.  Just thinking of her precious life makes me smile even on the worst days.  This may sound lopsided loopy I know that I smile more now that she is in heaven then when she was on earth, but it is true.  I smile knowing she lived full, and she lives full now in His presence. Now re-united with her love, and children who went before her she is fully there.  She wasn’t fully all here even though she was here.  Her tired mind had faded.  Memories were lost.  Even though she couldn’t remember a lot, and had forgotten most of her life, she never forgot to love.

Even while she suffered the loss of her sweet mind she never lost her ability to love and smile.  I pray I too never loose my ability to smile or love.  I will loose a lot of things in this life, but I never want to loose my ability to smile or love.