My family and I recently moved my mother just a few miles down the road into a condo, and just like every other move we've made over the years - we managed, despite all of our checks, rechecks, and repeated rechecks, to lose something small, but of significant sentimental value to all of us. A small note book, filled with funny things we said as kids, and additional pages with times her grandchildren made her laugh is now missing. We're trying our best to remember those stories so we can record them again - which seems difficult, but while I am enjoying my own grandchildren, so many memories come flooding back that make me grin! It's a slow process, but I think we might just pull it off! This week I heard a mom say she longed for the day that she could reach into her ... View Post
Let the Season Begin (Again)
Still navigating my way through empty-nest-hood, I rearranged many favorite books in my Mama Cave this afternoon. (I use this word "empty-nest-hood" often, so I'm going with - it's a real word. You won't find it in a dictionary because I made it up, though. But it's real, okay?), The same empty room has, over the past 5+ years, housed four different individuals who needed homes for awhile. Therefore, my nest technically hasn't really been very empty, after all. I've had mostly good experiences, but some not-so-desirable experiences, and finally decided last fall it would become my Mama Cave again. After all, if I was going to call myself an empty nester, I needed to empty the nest. That room has gone from my study room, to my ironing room, to what is currently my ... View Post
Loads of Love, Mother
Like a chicken with its head cut off, I'm running around this morning getting ready for several things going on this week, beginning with a funeral I need to leave for in an hour. This blog could wait. It should wait. But, here I am! Name change papers, name change papers...... I've got to get those out and make a copy and get them in the mail for Ian. Laundry on the steps waiting for me to carry up and fold....... Where are those papers??? Well, I found them. But in the process of searching, I also ran into my grandmother's will. That is a picture of her on the front of this blog. I have kept and cherished this will for many years. I loved that it was her handwriting. Isn't it beautiful? I wish I would have really known her. I wish I could have sat as an adult at ... View Post
Just As You Are
Recently I had the opportunity to pray with a homeless man. He'd been witnessed to before - that was obvious. We had a very lengthy, interesting conversation. I asked him if he wanted to pray, and give his life to the Lord, and he said yes. He said he finally felt like he should do that. But then he became a little upset and said he didn't remember any of the prayers he'd memorized as a child. I told him to speak from his heart. Nobody wants to be spoken to from a script, ESPECIALLY God. In fact, it's our hearts God wants us to surrender, and its FROM our hearts that He wants those prayers to come - with whatever honest words we have in us at that rock bottom moment to express our deep need for him. And so my homeless friend began to pray. His eyes were closed. My ... View Post
I’m an ICU Nurse, and THIS is my code status
There's not a day that goes by my body doesn't remind me of the fact that we don't live forever. Sometimes I hurt from head to toe. Come to think of it, most mornings I hurt from head to toe. I'm an empty nester, looking forward to hopefully retiring one day (with dreams of becoming top sales associate at the Vera Bradley store! ;) This year on the tippy top of my priority list was seeing a financial advisor to find out if retirement is even a word that should be in my vocabulary. And then I made some changes to my will, my trust, etc. That involved documents regarding what my end-of-life wishes are. Yeah, that always brings up some crazy conversations. Fortunately, they are conversations I'm used to having - but mostly with the family members of my patients. I ... View Post
The Day the Outhouse Blew Up
Every now and then something will spark a memory that makes me laugh really hard. I know how lucky I am that I get to say that! And when that laugh comes from way deep down inside, causing me to throw my head back, and then have to catch my breath and immediately phone someone in my family who will "get it," well - that laugh usually involves my Dad! Today was one of those days. My cousin Jo Ann in Nova Scotia used to come to Detroit and stay with me for long, fun visits. Some fun we still enjoy laughing about, and some fun we will never breathe a word about. To anyone. So don't try to make us. Our lips are sealed. Dad loved Jo Ann - he loved her just like one of his own daughters. And Jo Ann loved him too, ever since a very early memory in her childhood when Dad ... View Post
Little Thing #27: Cornerstone Baptist Church
Little Thing #27: My church & my peeps! A racist, conservative, Republican, white bigot. That is what I was called this week. That was not based on anything I’d said, or done, or anything this individual who claims to know me, actually knows. It was simply based on the color of my skin. I’m white by the way. I’m first generation American too. My father served in the US Army, and became a citizen. He loved this country, and he came here legally. Legally. Worked his butt off. Taught me right from wrong. Sent me to school to get an education, because he knew how important that was. He only had a 5th grade education, and he wanted more for me than he had. He taught me to be a strong woman of God, and he taught me right from wrong by the way that he lived his life. I ... View Post
Little Thing #24: Wilson’s Bank
See this little bank? It sat on the window sill of in the tiny little kitchen of the 800-square foot bungalow home I grew up in for as long as I can remember. There were never any pennies in it - just dimes and quarters. Mum saved as many as she could, and that provided some of the gas money we used to drive to and from Nova Scotia each summer. My brother, sister, and I would use a kitchen knife to get the coins out because there was no cork in the bottom. The phone number on it made me chuckle because I can still remember phone numbers beginning with letters, and remembering mine by singing it! "KE3-4053, KE3-4053, KE3-4053, that's my telephone number!" Well that little bank was in Mum's throw-away pile recently, but I just had to have it. So now it's sitting on my ... View Post