{Together}

One of my best friend's in this entire world met Jesus face to face one month ago today...my dearest Grandma Lottie Belle...yes, the one whom my first daughter was named after.  I was honored that she waited for me to hold her hand and whisper the last words she heard this side of Glory into her ear as she saw her Saviour...and her daughter...my precious mother.  My grandmother sacrificed her own life to live with us part of my childhood to care for my mother and our entire family in my mother's final years.  And...our friendship grew stronger and stronger as I became an adult...and then a wife...and then a mother...and, ultimately, a mother who knew the deepest grief she understood so well herself.  I could call her when no one else got it...when I just wanted my girl back and just needed to weep.  She got it.  She lived it.  She understood.  And...as much as I hate that she had to bury her daughter and I mine...I'm thankful for the bond we shared.  Oh how I miss her...and our long talks and her talking me through recipes and asking about my babies and putting her on speakerphone to hear my children chat with her and conversations about Heaven and how amazing it must be there.   

So, I played some of her favorite hymns and rubbed her hand and told her I was going to give her a spa like experience as she left this fallen world...I refused to leave her side and made sure she knew I was there.  I was told she hadn't responded in over a day to anyone but I know her thumb squeezed my hand and I know she heard the hymns she loved choosing to let go "At Calvary"...and my whisper to "go to them"...she was so close and then so far away.  The same sweet Spirit that filled my parent's bedroom when I was only 16 and then again came into that emergency room a little over 8 years ago filled hers...His presence was there and she was at peace.

She is with my mother and my daughter she had never met...and, as they had arranged over 20 years ago, their bodies lie in rest side by side. 

And so...the daughter I never thought I'd have and I did what my grandmother loved most and went shopping...and spent half a day arranging every single part of their first shared bouquet...