Seeing "Mama" Home

This is a sad time for our church family. One of our dear ones is slowly and steadily making her way Home, in the heavenly sense of home. It's not sad for Christine. She's lived 90 mostly wonderful years, and she has REALLY LIVED. Most of us would want that to be said of us. She's looking forward now, not reminiscing about her past. She's looking forward to Heaven and to being able to look into the face of  her Father-God and looking forward to being reunited with her husband, Lloyd and all her other loved-ones who are waiting to greet her. I just know the word is out that she will soon be there. That welcoming committee is waiting just beyond that thin veil that separates the mortal and the immortal. Don't you know there's some celebrating already taking place! Her favorite songs, Amazing Grace and It Is Well With My Soul, are being sung and Hallelujahs fill the air!

When my own mama died, I was not there. I was packing, getting ready to return to East Texas to be with her, because she was in hospice care, and we knew she was leaving us very soon. The phone rang, and it was my sister. She said, "You don't have to rush, Diana. Mama's already gone." It just broke my heart...not that she was gone; she was ready to go at 89, and I had seen a few days earlier that she had "folded her tent" and was ready. It broke my heart that I wasn't right there. Christine has no children; her church and some darling others make up her family, so, in that sense, she has many children, and I am one of them. I may not be in the room when Christine passes, but I have been there during her last hours. In a way, I'm doing this not only for Christine, but for myself and in honor of my own mama. . . at last, I am "seeing Mama home."