Easter Brunch table

Not much time around here to do things as I liked, but I'm pretty happy with it anyway. I haven't used the pink flamingo napkin rings in forever and I love how the plates turned out with the doilies and hankies underneath. Wish I had had the foresight to put my metal lace chargers underneath, but that's ok. We had a lovely brunch anyway and I made monkey bread and sausage breakfast casserole. El husbando's dad laughed. We laughed. Liam said the grace (repeating after someone else, but still...)

How does time pass and we go from this

To this.

In just two short years....

We had a lovely brunch and egg hunt this morning.

He is risen.

Peeps sunflower cake

I love Peeps, so when I saw this cake in Taste of Home magazine, I knew I had to make it. It makes me smile just to look at it. It was SO easy to make and everyone loved it. Surely it will be an Easter tradition around here.

Eggs, Eggs and More Eggs

Into the Light

Last night my mother in law left this world.

As soon as I pull my thoughts together I have more to say, especially about the beautiful prayer shawl that arrived in the mail the other day.

We will miss her desperately. There will be a hole in our family, but we are thankful for her release from suffering. It is difficult for me to realise that it was three months from her diagnosis to last night. At Thanksgiving when she was feeling poorly, she said she knew she was dying of cancer. I didn't take her seriously. Even when the diagnosis came, I thought we had a hard fight ahead of us, but it was a fight I thought we would win until a month ago.

But oh what a beautiful week to die---holy week. The week of hope and triumph over death. I will leave you with the fact that though we are sad, we are at peace.

The days of Ok and Not Ok

It is morning and right now I am ok. Most of the time I am ok, and then a curtain of blackness sneaks in.
Last Monday el husbando's brother and sister in law flew in, I took the day off from work, and we all joined together at my Mother in Law's house. We baked her brownies in the morning--she is an infamous chocoholic, and wrote We (heart) U in M&Ms on the top.
It was a wonderful day. She was better than I've seen her since Thanksgiving. Having given up the drainage tubes in her lungs, stopped the cancer medications, and just focused on pain management, she sat on her chair in the living room and talked and laughed with us for ten hours. Liam played with his aunt and uncle without hesitation--not bad since he hasn't seen them for 14 months. Without the oxygen tubes in her nose, and the fact that she is now so thin, you never would have known that my MIL is in her last days. She ate pizza. When they served the brownies, we found that we weren't the only ones with that idea and there were several kinds to choose from.
We've been trying to go every day. One day she was in bed and I went in to talk with her and she gave me her wedding ring set for Liam and another antique ring from her grandmother. We wrote on the envelope what they were and I held back tears as she told me she wanted me to have all of her family albums. and teapots. and pink glassware.
I have just done this---taking someone else's things because of death. It shouldn't be happening again.
For the rest of my life I will endure people's comments about their awful mother in laws, while I know that I lost the best of them. But I also loved her while she was here.
She spent the day the other day cancelling her credit cards, paying bills and trying to get her affairs in order. She is amazing. She is writing out the cards for Liam. She told me that my mom even put highschool and college graduation cards and a wedding card in there.
This why I cry. I feel from the bottom of my toes how much she is going to miss in Liam's life and how much she loves him. I can't shake that dream I had back in November where I knew I was dying and I knew the minute I closed my eyes I would never see him again and I would miss his whole life. I'm sure she knows that, too.
Today is her birthday. I have no card. They all say something about many years of happiness.
I hope I can give her hours.

Mortality sucks

I wish I were writing the last few days when we've had such good brownie-sharing days. But I'll save descriptions of that for another day when the light has entered again. Right now I've just spent an hour long commute in sobs and with my stomach feeling like I've been socked. Again and again.

For now grief is stretching ahead of me like a rubber band pulling to its breaking point.

God is in the casseroles.

I've been reading Eat, Pray, Love with the intention of going to my mom's group's book club. I really was looking forward to going, but right now it doesn't seem like I'll be able to. Still, though I'm not finished with the book something within it is resonating within me. At one point the author, Liz, who is spiritual but not Christian and her sister Catherine who seems either agnostic or atheist are having a discussion about a family who has recently been through tragedy. Liz says, "those people need Grace" while Catherine said "Those people need casseroles" and Catherine goes on to organize a casserole committee who brings food to these people for something like a year. Liz says that Catherine doesn't realise that that is Grace.

And it is true. God is in the casseroles.

Sometimes we think that God is silent and that he doesn't care and then suddenly people rally around us and care for us in the best ways that people can care. You may think that's simply good people, and yes, they are good people. But that's also God, reaching through the heavens and throwing his arms around you through tangible human arms.

Casting Crowns has a song called If we are the body. It's a song I often listen to on my way to work. The refrain says:

If we are the body
why aren't his arms reaching
why aren't his hands healing
why aren't his words teaching
if we are the body
why aren't his feet going
why is his love not showing them
there is a way
there is a way

And each morning I think to myself--Lord, let me be your hands today.
I hope that I am.

I know in the coming weeks I'll be feeling the hands of friends and other loved ones. Arms will embrace me. A casserole or two might come our way and I'll know that these arms, hands and feet are not only those of kind and loving people, but are my rock solid way of touching God.

The world, it keeps spinning.

I am sitting in a house that desperately needs to be cleaned and reorganized (there are boxes and furniture from grandma's everywhere). I feel lost and confused and el husbando won't be home from far away until tonight.

Yet Liam is the glue that is keeping me together.

Last night when he talked to his daddy from far away, he told him "mama has lots of rules: no fires, no candles, no stepping on people, no breaking things, no tv and no flowers."



I have no idea where that came from. It would have been a good idea to give him rules, but I didn't. Some of his were good, but mama can't live without tv and flowers.



Yesterday at Michael's craft store we went by some people with the cart and Liam yelled out "Excuse me!" when the people giggled a little he said, even more loudly "Those peoples are funny. I say EXCUSE ME and they laugh. Peoples are funny."

So, why then, if people are so funny did he start to grab at me in fear when we are in line and announcing that "those peoples behind us are going to burn me!"



And what's with this fire theme?

Doors are closing

Yesterday we finished cleaning out my grandma's apartment and closed the door on the empty place. When we walked away from turning in the keys I fell apart. My heart felt like the empty apartment, hollow and empty.

Today my mother in law called from the hospital to tell me that she is going home under hospice care. We are going to spend some days as a family, until she says goodbye to us.

I am finding it hard to breathe without sobbing big heaving sobs. How strong can I possibly be. There has to be a breaking point.

Pray.