The rest of that thing I started last time...

No, I'm not dead.
No, I've not moved to an amish community somewhere in the recesses of Pennsylvania.
No, I've not joined a convent where internet access is withheld.

I've just been reaaallly swamped with things that are more important than indulging myself with a blog entry. ;-)
But I think I'm coming off of the swampededness now, and I hope to get everyone caught up on the Belt family's goings-on.
So I will finish the story I started with the last post, and then I can go back to regularly scheduled blogging. Hee.

..........

So...back to 2006....

I slept in the waiting room the night they expected she would die.
Friends and family came out of the woodwork to see her. Several members of our church choir and band were there.
We all sang....Great Is Thy Faithfulness...It Is Well...Blessed Assurance....full, rich, loud, slow, pensive, heartfelt four-part harmony.
Beautiful...

Early that morning, Nana came in and woke me up. "The nurses said it won't be long now," she said, "it's time to go see your mom."
I walked into her room...the light from the early morning was gradually brightening through the open blinds on the window. It was quiet. The monitors beeped and the respirator huffed, but everything was quiet...something in the air...have you ever felt a soul ready to leave?
I stood there over her bed, holding her hand, stroking her hair, kissing her forehead, whispering to her.
I kept saying over and over, "God can still make her better. If He wanted to heal her, He could do it right now. She could stabilize, her lungs could soften, and she could breathe again. He can still make her better..."
Of course He could. But I think I knew He wouldn't. Hers was a soul ready to leave. We all knew it.
We all watched the monitors, watching her heart beat erratically. The nurses came in and turned all the monitors off so we could stop watching them and try to savor our last minutes with Mom.

It's a bit of a tradition in our family, we read the book of Proverbs every day. Every evening Dad would read it with the boys and Mom would read it with the girls...Proverbs 1 on the 1st of the month..Proverbs 2 on the 2nd...etc. Then would take some time to pray together for people we knew that might be sick or struggling. We saw God do some wonderful things with that time every night.
Anyway, while Mom was sick, I started reading to her. I would read her the letters that people wrote her, sometimes a chapter of a book, and I started reading Proverbs and Joshua. (Joshua is a fantastic book. If you ever need a reminder of what the Lord does for His people....read Joshua.)

I asked Dad if he would read the Proverb to Mom. It was the last time we would ever read with Mom, and I knew she would want Dad to do it. She adored the sound of his voice, and if she could hear him today (we could never tell if she heard us or not), maybe it would make her happier.
So he took the Bible, and he read, and I heard the words Mom had read to me so many times before...I cried.

Mercies, how I miss her...

..........

A year later, I (predictably) found myself reliving the same events. But not as quickly as I had thought.
Throughout the morning, and even heading into the afternoon, I was beginning to wonder why I hadn't found myself with the overwhelming need to bawl until I had a headache and was thoroughly pink in the face.

But then I paid a visit to the cemetery.
That was...difficult, to put it mildly.

"I'm tired. Like, not just physically tired, I'm mentally and emotionally tired," I wrote to my friend Jill, "I really hate all the anniversaries that came in the last few weeks....a year since I last saw her healthy...a year since I last saw her awake....a year since I last saw her....She died a year ago today. I just came back from the cemetery not too long ago. My eyes are still red and I think I still have some remnant mascara streaks on my face. :-/
"On the seventh and eighth, we'll meet anniversaries of her visitation and funeral. And then the eighteenth is her birthday. I think that's the last one.
But that doesn't mean much, 'cause I'll probably still have crummy days in March, and April, and May, and....but enough about that."

I sat there next to Mom's grave for awhile...I just sat there. And then I started crying. I didn't resist it. I was coming close to feeling guilty for not crying more that day...
Eventually, I took a breath and walked to the van, where I turned on the radio. The station was playing a song that Mom taught me and used to play on the radio ages and ages ago......and it was so familiar. It felt too normal, and I totally lost it. I leaned on the steering wheel and cried. I don't even know how long I was there. But my eyes were still red and my head still hurt for a long time after. When I came home, I found that I still had a half-written e-mail to Joanna, and all of a sudden, it was all I could talk about... "I think I was actually okay until I went there and sat by her grave. Even after a year, that's still very weird."
And it *is* weird..."her grave"...."Mom's grave"...
Sometimes it makes me angry to say it.
Is it wrong to be angry about it?
More often than not, it's more like melancholy.
..........

So that's it. That was February. All two days of it. Really though, the rest of the month seems pale by comparison. There wasn't much to mention. Just the usual whatevers.

Let's see, is there anything else that happened...?
Oh yes, of course, Erinne grew a ton in February. She's trying to talk now. And she actually succeeds at a few words. Namely "Dad", "Bobby", and "no".
And she's walking across the room now. But usually not any further than that. Once she's walked that far, she gets lazy and drops to floor to crawl the rest of the way. ;-)
She gives kisses and hugs...but very selectively. She will only dole out such affection when she feels like it, and only to a privileged few. Namely Bobby, Amanda, and Dad.
And she kisses and hugs inanimate objects too...but only if she really likes them. It's so pathetic-sad...the Kool-Aid bottle gets more kisses than I do. LOL

..........

Anyway, there's February for ya....halfway through March. ;-)
Thanks for your patience.
Don't worry, I hope to be back to my at-least-once-a-week-ing now.

Until then,
~Ashley~