Tribute to Mom

I wanted to post this the day of her funeral. Mom was buried today at what I felt was a good ceremony: honoring her, her Lord, and her life. This was what I wrote down to share about mom, and a good friend of the family (as well as one of my best friends) read it for me. I apologize to those that attended the funeral as this will be a repeat for you, but I felt I should share this with my other readers:

Mom has always been someone to write little notes here and there. She's owned several Bibles and she usually loads them with comments. There is one she had with her most often and this week, I've been looking through it for some remembrances. To my surprise, many of what I thought had been just mere notes from sermons are sermons themselves. To my even greater surprise are to-do lists and even one list of payees into a gift fund!
But I expected to see occasional notes to the Lord. That was her. As she would read--as she did nearly every night--she would also pour her heart out before the Lord. And she recorded these things--wittingly or not--to bless those that would later see them. I've been comforted as I've fingered through this Bible to remember Mom as she was. Not as she'd been in 2010. It was refreshing, for instance, to remember her for the woman that mourned deeply for my father. Notes from 1992 are abundant and poignant. Passages were apparently grieved over and worn with written prayers laying out her sadness and loneliness during that following Winter that would seem so long to us, and especially to her.
Another passage caught my eye that she marked from 2005. It was the date that my first pregnancy ended in miscarriage. She laid out her feelings before the Lord about the pain that I recall sharing with her over the phone as we both cried and grieved over the child that it seemed I would never be able to bear.
Yet I recalled her joy at the shower and in the hospital when my first daughter Mariah was born in 1998 as I looked through pictures this week. I then thought of the renewed hope--and fears--we shared when I announced the pregnancy that resulted in the birth of Julia this year just two weeks before the heart surgery that would ultimately cause her to lose her life. I am blessed that she was at least able to see her last grandchild and share in the unexpected joy of my recent pregnancy.
While it's been a busy year for me due to the baby and mom's decline in health, I can say as Job did (and as my older daughter realized): "the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." I will miss her, but the Lord has mercifully eased my loss with a new and unexpected baby. But for my mom, it's all gain, and I rejoice with her as she's united with her Savior, and reunited with her loved ones. As she often said: "Getting old isn't for wimps," and I know she is now at peace, and her poor body that had been through so much is finally at rest.

Missing Haiku and Everything Else

I do plan to eventually blog again, as things are starting to calm down a bit. I've come to the point that no matter how much time I spend, things are not going to change with my mom unless God intervenes. Sad to say, but, in a way, I give up. I've run out of steam and feel that other aspects of my life have been neglected long enough and with nothing to show for it that I'm going to have to scale back. This doesn't mean that I am doing nothing--far from it. There are a large number of things that I must do--and soon. And many are ongoing. This means that I'm beginning to reprioritize this as a long-term status, rather than a short-term one. I hate it, but that's the way it is. Just this morning I reminisced about how it was about this date last year that I told mom about my pregnancy and how happy she was. I would have never dreamed this would be our situation one year later. I miss mom, even though she's not gone yet. Please keep her and us in your prayers as I figure out how to best fit the situation in with my life in an ongoing way.

To lighten things up, I'd like to post my first Haiku in quite a while:

Left Blank?

I find this funny:
"This page intentionally
left blank" isn't blank.

I look forward to seeing if any of you have been getting rusty with your haiku. Care to share?

What to do?

Given my very limited time, I'm wondering would it be better to post info here or on Facebook. Then again, I don't like Facebook very much and feel like it's "less private" than my blog (as if my blog is private, however infrequently I'm posting nowadays and boring I try to make it lol). But at least here I can fulminate. Facebook isn't particularly good for that. Twitter is right out. Just how many ways does one need to communicate online, anyway? So, since I'm here, I guess I'll fulminate. Not sure if it will be fruitful, but I'll try.

As many of you may know, my mother has been struggling with heart issues and the fallout from her heart surgery back in March. This would explain my lack of much online activity, if the baby thing didn't do the job for you. Yes, it never rains, it pours. Despite the incredibly bad timing of both events together (not that anything could be done about either), I find that, while having a new baby has made everything much more difficult in dealing with the situation with my mother, in a way the timing was impeccable. Without the joy (despite the challenges) of my new daughter, the days now turning to months of watching my mother languish would have been much darker. I would like to think that, even if she doesn't make it, Mom also was slightly distracted from her misery by the blessed event. Sadly, it seemingly did not bring about as much for her as I'd hoped, but that is due to many extenuating circumstances I won't go into here. Which reminds me to ask my readers to pray for her. She is still in a very tenuous condition in the hospital. Thankfully, however, she is saved. I could fulminate about the state of medicine and the horrible experience we've been having with several doctors, but I'll leave it at the statement that I'm terribly frustrated and disappointed--actually angry--at the "pass the buck" mentality and lack of listening to family members who have valuable information about my mother's state.

These events made Mother's Day last week bittersweet. I wonder if it is the last I will have with any progenitor. But I was able to celebrate with my mother-in-law, and, of course, my wonderful family. They and my church and work families have all been very helpful and supportive during this difficult time. I've been blessed.


Here's a picture taken on Mother's Day 2010. I hope it was a good day for my readers, whether mothers themselves or celebrating their mothers or their memory (Julia, by the way, is the name of my paternal grandmother whom I never met). The gift of motherhood is wonderful. God is good.

Lazy Haiku

It's been a busy week, what with 4 Dr. appointments and being on the phone all week for other various reasons. No traditional Super Bowl party this weekend. I'm already still sick, so we don't need another traditional sickness to get us again, plus I'm behind on housework. I thought you were supposed to get this nesting instinct ... well, if I have it, it's buried beneath exhaustion.

So, now that I've set up my excuse, here's my lazy haiku of the week:
http://www.snorgtees.com/haikutshirt-p-668.html

Note the shirt description as well. :) Looks like a fun place to work if you could write up shirt descriptions like that all the time.

No new news on anything else: baby is looking good still, and I'm doing ok, considering. And, as promised, here's some photos of the baby shower last week. :)



Don't have pictures of all of the guests, but you get the idea. They are busily working on either their haikus, the game to match biblical female names with info about them, or eating. :)

A good time was had by all, I think.

A Haiku Shower??

Well, chalk it up to my creative friend to give me both a nice shower and an innovative way to not have to come up with my own haiku for the blog today. :) A "task" for my shower attendees tonight was to write haiku for me--inspired by the upcoming blessed event, of course, so we will deviate from my "laundry list" of haiku topics for the week. :)

I'll hopefully get some photos soon of the attendees at the shower to post. To all that attended and those that couldn't, a hearty "Thank you!" I enjoyed the fellowship, the sweet words, and the kind and thoughtful gifts. And a special "Thank you!" to the orchestrator, the Lady of the Holler.

On to the guest haiku!

Trust Him completely
Remember that during long nights
The morning will come.

Smelly, wakeful, loud!
Eating, crying, changing—oh!
Such a sweet blessing.

You think you're tired now,
Just wait a couple of months
But it's all worthwhile!

Baby, dear baby
Love you so much I could cry
Baby, dear baby

Having waited long
She now grows close and watches
For the joy sublime.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks, ladies!!

And I close with these recent pics of Julia:

I'm back!

It's not that I don't have anything to say ... it's that I am lacking in energy and motivation for some strange reason. ;) Despite illness, it's been a busy winter, which makes busy less fun and leaves less time for other things. Yep, I'm still sick. Rog is still sick. Ri is finally well, PTL. But no one is horribly ill any more at least. Pregnancy is going pretty well, but they have moved up the delivery date into February, as Jules is starting to grow faster than she should and it's getting harder to control my diabetes. Dr. yesterday gave me 5 refills on the meds saying I would probably need them after delivery. :( Let's hope and pray not.

At any rate, I'm glad to see a delivery in sight, although I still feel there's so much to do. But all that will come, and I have been making headway. Will post pics of nursery soon. Here are a few pics from Christmas. Can't say there were many to choose from. Just didn't get the camera out enough and the new cell phones aren't talking to my computer to download pics from them either. Not really any good pics of the belly either, but a nice "Fonzy" shot of me in a new jacket that barely fits over it. :) All in all, it was a nice Christmas. I just wish we all would have felt better. Many were either sick or just getting over something.



Now onto the haiku!

Hmm options are ...
laundry detergent, the tags on clothes, online games, snow, being pregnant, exotic foods, prunes, or oil changes, and buckeyes. Almost makes me want to try putting as many as possible into one. If anyone succesfully gives it a shot, they get 500 points. Don't ask me what they're good for, but you get 500 of 'em and that's more than anyone else will get.

Laundry detergent is too close to bleach, so I'm going for tags.

Clothing tags, here today, gone tomorrow?
A haiku lament

Like 'em or hate 'em
You might miss 'em when it's all
Just print on fabric.

Ooh, and the reason to lament ...

Laundry detergent
is so strong nowadays that
it eats off print tags.

Now what are we gonna do when we need to know the washing instructions and what size that knit shirt was?! A few washes, and it's chaos I tell you!

Well, that's 2 off my list. Anyone else wanna give 'em a shot?