Spring brings gratitude.

Today, God gives me peace.. He grants me peace most days but especially today. 

May 1st 2012.
Just the day before, we all gathered in her room in palliative care. Friends and family streamed in and out, everyone told their best stories, there was laughter- lots of laughter and tears. Her vitals became strong and the nurses even commented how this often happens because they are surround by the love and laughter of their life. I find that completely amazing, don't you? Dementia had taken its toll on mama and it had been years since she remembered and recited stories, felt comfortable in a room full of people or organized and cooked a meal. Yet in her dying days, she felt the love of her family around her. 

Hers was a life well lived. I remember gardens in spring, homemade cakes for our birthday and reading stories from "childcraft" snuggled on the couch. Saturday shopping trips downtown, lunch at Britlings and visiting friends and relatives out of town but never forgetting those around her that were in need. I remember lessons in love, forgiving quickly and often, and never giving up.(She taught us we could do anything.) I remember scraps of pie crust saved for me to make cinnamon-sugar crust cookies, picnics on the porch and masses of food prepared for other people. She was not a perfect woman, (there's the thing with the squirrels and ax) but that's a story for another day.  Today I remember how wonderful she was, how at peace I was when she took her last breath. No more pain, no more fear, no more dementia.
I stood beside my brothers as she was laid to rest. Yet in that moment, as this, I am at peace. It seems I should be very sad ... but more than anything, I am grateful. Grateful she was mine, for the tenacity inherited, grateful for the lessons taught, the laughter shared and the love given so freely.
She would have been checking on her irises this time of year. They grow in my yard now, a constant reminder of her. When I move, I will dig them up and take them with me just as I take her lessons and her love. Yes, today there is peace. Gods complete encompassing peace. 

John 14:27
²⁷ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.