(I started this a couple of weeks before Christmas but just now finished it)
I heard it again. The song. The one that played on the radio just hours after my mom passed away.
I heard it again. The song. The one that played on the radio just hours after my mom passed away.
She died in 2005, about a week before Thanksgiving, and I was driving home that evening after being with my dad, making preliminary funeral arrangements and calling friends and family to share the sad and overwhelming news. The radio was on but I wasn't really listening and I have no clue what station was playing but, as I was driving through Gainesville, it came on. I heard the words of the song saying "Grandma's home for Christmas" and that's all it took. I had cried pretty much throughout the day but now the tears really flowed and I almost had to stop driving. I immediately understood and was so grateful for the message that God was sending me that Mom was now "home", well, happy, and in the midst of God and those loved ones that had gone before.
It felt like my own little comforting and healing miracle. I mean, it was a week before Thanksgiving so Christmas music hadn't even been playing that much and I'm not sure what radio station, at that time of night, would've been playing southern gospel. It was the first time I'd ever heard the song and I've not heard it since.
Till this morning. The grief of Mom's passing has all but gone away and I simply enjoy remembering, almost daily, who she was to me, the good and the bad, and what it meant to our family to have her for our mom. So when I heard the song again I thought of her. But I also thought about how I, myself, am a mom and will become a grandmother at some point in the hopefully not so distant future.
I really hadn't listened to the other words of the song on that sad day back in 2005 but this morning I heard them. And the voice sang about the influence that "Grandma" had on the family and how, growing up, he had enjoyed going to her house because of the smile she wore on "her tired and wrinkled face" and how she'd squeeze him close in a big hug.
I want to be that kind of grandma. I want my home to always be welcoming and warm when my kids and grandkids come. I want to be so intimate with God that I will never leave impressions of myself but only that of Him and His Son, Jesus.
So this random song was a comfort in 2005. And it has now become a challenge in 2013 for me to prepare to be a grandma full of smiles, hugs, and a life that points to God.
