A Family That Praise Together...

Blogging the Baptist Hymnal…Page 6…”Praise to the Lord the Almighty”

Recently I came across a sheet of paper I hadn’t seen in almost 15 years.  My family had gone back to Wisconsin for my grandmother’s funeral and it had been such an eventful few days that my sister and I had made some notes on things we wanted to be sure and remember. I’m glad we did that. And looking at the list all these years later I was taken right back to those sad and interesting days.  Raise your hand if you find it to be endlessly interesting anytime you get say, oh, forty members of your extended family all in one place.  Grandma would have loved it.

We lived in another state and had missed much of my sweet grandma’s fight with the wretched worm called cancer. The family that had been right there until the end had countless stories praising her desire to live, her strength, and the sacrifices made by the daughters who tried their best to take care of her.  We cried together and we laughed through our tears together. They told the story of how Grandma was mostly in a coma-like state toward the end, but when no one could locate her great-grand-daughter, Shenai,  in the big hospital and they whispered their concerns in her room…Grandma opened her eyes and spoke in a clear, strong voice…”Shenai is missing?”  Always the one concerned for someone else.

 And when she left the big hospital in Madison for the quiet of a small hospice setting, my aunt Midge laid down and made snow angels outside her window.  She would have loved that too. Then when the time came for her to leave the pain of this world, my cousin Lorri stood in for my mom, who was trying to get there as quickly as she could. She died with 5 girls near here…as she had lived all those early years…with 5 girls near her. 

I will never forget all her daughters gathered around her just before the lid was closed that would take her from their sight (in this life). We all stepped into the other room to give them privacy and we held each other with many tears on many shoulders as their voices filled the other room with praise and love for their mother. Then my cousin, Travis, in his desire to share with all the grand-kids his innermost thoughts…told us all with tear-filled eyes and trembling bottom lip…”She was the best Grandma ever! And she was so proud of us! Thirteen grandchildren and not a convict in the bunch!”    

Praise indeed.

Grandma would have loved it.