~a message from my mother~

 "We all were with her there that night that she passed away and it was from her death bed that she gave me the most wonderful gift that she had ever bestowed unto me in my whole life.  Better than any present off the shelves of Walmart or from the pages of the Sears Roebuck mail order catalogue.  Far greater than any gift that money could have bought that late September night.  In her last moments of lucidity with us, she opened her eyes as she heard me say, 'I love you Mom and I will miss you very much.'  She looked right at me and in a voice that I will always remember, no matter what, said back to me, 'Peggy Ann you are a good girl.'  A few hours later, she was gone."

Lois Scott was always a great giver of gifts to her family and friends.  She took a lot of joy in giving things to others, sometimes at great personal sacrifice to herself.  Perhaps it was the fact that she grew up during the Great Depression Era and knew what it was like to do without the special  things that a person might have wanted to have but could not.  Whatever the reason she did so, Mom had this uncanny ability to make a small amount of money stretch pretty dang thin in order to make sure that she could give gifts to her family on their birthdays, Christmas and every other special occasion in between.  I'm amazed at how she did it.

I still have boxes of things here in Colorado and back in Kansas as well that have the label upon them, "MOM'S STUFF~DON'T THROW AWAY UNTIL YOU SORT THROUGH THEM!"  Little by little I have gone through them and for whatever reason, I've not been in all that big of a hurry to do so.  Now I find myself more and more going through them and it seems sometimes it's as though I'm searching for her in there, you know?  Last night I was looking at  some things as I was cleaning in the spare bedroom and came across the little journal that she had written all of her funeral plans in.  Now,  I had seen that book many times and it was no surprise that it was in that particular box.  I just hadn't the heart to get rid of it, to throw it away after the over 7  years since her passing.  But last night as I opened it up, I found something I don't recall seeing ever before and it gave me pause to stop and read it.  Not once, but many times.

In her typical "mom handwriting", she had left a message for anyone who opened up the book to see.  Not sure how I missed it in all of these years but I guess last night was the appointed time for me to receive yet another "gift" from my mother.  She would not have realized, but yet MAYBE she already did, the peace and comfort it would give her 58-year old daughter as she would read it in the years to come.

It was a poem that she had copied out of the Grit magazine one day.  I had remembered seeing it before and so as I read the words she had penned out on the front cover of her journal, I knew where it had come from.  Mom always enjoyed reading little poems like that one and often she would cut out clippings from the newspaper when she would find them.  It must have given her great comfort to read those words, so much so that she felt they should be included in the "plan book" for the end of her life.  Knowing my mom, she must have also realized just how sad all of us kids would be when the time would come to say "good bye" to her and that maybe, just MAYBE, one of us would see it and take some solace in the fact that she realized that each of us have our time to be called back to Heaven.  All of us, even my mom.

Last evening, opening up that diary one last time before tucking it away was her gift to me.  It was a present of great value and if you asked if I'd give away those handwritten words in a 97-cent journal from Walmart in exchange for some other much finer gift, I'd surely have to say "no" to your offer.  The older I become, the more I cherish those things that money could never buy.  I will always be my mother's "little girl", no matter if she is here or not.  Perhaps there is a reason that I've been so slow in opening up all of her belongings.  Maybe I am going through those things at just the right times in my life, times when I really need to.  Her sweet and loving messages, written here on earth yet delivered to me from Heaven above, mean more than one could ever even imagine. 

My dear friends and family, if you are blessed to have a mother still living, don't wait until Mother's Day upcoming to call her and see how she is doing.  Why not do it now, today?  Consider that admonition my mother's  message to you.  You won't regret it if you do.  You may well regret it if you do not.

Have a great Wednesday everyone out there and thank you that you are my friends, always.

I will always be her little girl and I don't think I'd want for it to be any other way.

Thank goodness she wasn't here when I went through the problems with "old lefty".  I would have never been allowed to ride a bike again.  I'd have been "GROUNDED" forever.

A wonderful mom and friend to all. 

She loved the color purple~