A few weeks prior to the last few days of her life on earth, we knew that her time was coming to an end very soon. Sometimes your body just says, "Hey, I think I've had enough of this party now and if you don't mind, I think I will call it done." I believe that is what happened to mom even though for quite a while we had kidded her about the possibility that she could live to be 106 years old, just like her mother before her. Mom was extremely adamant that she wasn't planning on sticking around THAT long and true to her word, she didn't.
I remember thinking in the days that came before what ended up being her very last birthday, what I could get her as a gift. What in the world do you get someone who truly has her bags packed and ready to go? After thinking for quite a while, I decided on something that I could bring to her to enjoy for a few days and then take home to my house. I chose a nice purple mum plant, one that she could enjoy the color from while she sat in her recliner. Mom loved it and told me I had done a good job picking out a healthy one. Yet after a few days, she asked me to take it home and plant it in my back garden. She said to me, "You'll enjoy it for me in the years to come, ok?" Mom knew the time was at hand.
We were blessed to be able to be with her in the final hours of her life. God bless the hospice workers who stepped in and realized that our final hours with her were going to be coming to a close very soon. We were able to reach family members close enough to make it home in time to be with her and as the final hours drew to a close she was surrounded by children and grandchildren and a host of the Lord's angels, just waiting to take her back.
One of the greatest privileges I believe that I have been afforded in this life of mine was to be sitting beside her bed in those last minutes. In one of her last very lucid moments, she looked at me and said to me "Peggy Ann you are a good girl." It was the last thing she said to me in this life. I remember crawling up beside her in that bed and laying my head by her shoulder and holding her as tightly as I could. And with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat that I can feel to this day, I told her that I loved her very much and that it was time to go. All of us there told her that we would be ok after she was gone and she didn't need to worry about anything any more. In the very early morning hours, she left and I wish I could say it was peaceful but Mom, bless her heart, decided to go out kicking and screaming. I admire her spunk, her spirit even as her last breaths were taken.
I think about her a lot these days, especially as I sit here in the house that she occupied for over 25 years. There are times when I feel her spirit still lingering here and when I walk up the basement stairs with a load of laundry, it isn't MY footsteps that I hear but hers. Even though I have changed much of the way the inside of my house looks, it is forever going to be known as "Grandma's house" and I want it to be so. I am at peace here, in a way that is hard to describe. It feels good, my friends.
Sometimes I wonder how my mom would feel about my bucket list ideas. I'm thinking pretty sure that she wouldn't have been too thrilled about my learning how to handle pythons and I dang well know that I would have been in big trouble for going on the back of a motorcycle at WAY too fast a speed of travel. (even I am sometimes amazed at THAT triple digit number) She did know that I went power parachuting once but it was only after I had landed on the ground again that my son Grahame told her. :) Not quite positive that she would have approved of the learning how to shoot a gun idea but I KNOW without a doubt that she would have been so happy that I finally learned to swim a bit.
It's kind of funny, you know. It doesn't seem to matter at all how old you are or the age of your mom. We still try to do what we know they would have wanted us to. When she died, I became a 52-year old orphan who STILL hadn't finished growing up yet. There were so many questions I had yet to ask her, so much I wanted to get her advice on. In her last hours, my siblings had to remind me to let her sleep (LOL) because I just kept talking to her. It did little good for them to tell me that because I just kept right on talking. :)
In the autumn of my 57th year, I sit here tonight thinking of her and really, giving thanks to God that I was born to her and my father. Every year in October when my birthday would arrive, I always sent her some flowers with a card attached saying, "Thanks for not stopping with just 5 kids." Without a doubt, I'm sure times were very tight for them but they loved children and LOTS of them and because of their love, I was born. She gave me a very precious gift~my life.
If you are still blessed this evening to have a mom or a dad, please pick up the phone and call them, if only to say "hello". I know without a doubt, that the greatest gift that a child can give their parent is the gift of their "presence". No high dollar gift from the best online shopping site can even come close to the gift of your "time". Do that for me, would you? For me AND my mom.
Good night friends~I love you all.
Labor Day, 1979 in Haven~with two great women who were role models in my life. My mom, Lois Scott and my paternal grandmother, Bessie Scott. I miss them both, so very much.
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