By G. E. Shuman
Last February I and
many of my family members gathered for a large party in Florida to celebrate my
mom’s 100th birthday. That’s right… it
was number one hundred. The party was
awesome. We, and especially Mom, had a wonderful time.
Mom has always been an amazing woman, raising six children
and helping care for nearly countless grandkids and great grandkids. For Mom,
her family is her life, and that life has not been an easy one, bringing up
kids in small-town America in the 60’s and forward, and surviving the losses of
both my dad and my brother Paul, and also of all of her own siblings. Somehow,
Mom has been an incredibly positive encouragement to us all… all those years
and right up to today. Her tremendous faith in God is where she gets her
strength to continue, even after her first hundred birthdays.
I have noticed something about Mom since that February
birthday. It used to be that I would call her, or she would call me a few times
a month so we could catch each other up on the happenings of life. Lately Mom
has made it a point to talk with all her children, basically every day. This is
probably not consciously because of the passing of time and the limited number
of days that she, and all of us have, but I’m not certain of that. For me it is
simply good to hear her voice those evenings, just before she has her nighttime
tea and goes to bed.
A week or two ago our seven-year-old granddaughter, Nahla,
had facetimed me from her home, as she also likes to do after school or before
bed. I love getting those calls from her. We talked for a few minutes and then
I happened to mention that I had also just talked with her great-grammy in
Florida. I mentioned to Nahla that my mom calls me almost every evening lately,
to just chat a while, and that I look forward to those calls, just as I do Nahla’s.
Nahla immediately got a caring grin on her face and simply,
profoundly replied: “Papa, she’s tucking you in.”
How could I be any more blessed than this?
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