Happy Thanksgiving Mom & Dad. This is the first major holiday that you have been together in Heaven. I miss you so much. I have spent the past two years of Thanksgiving, Christmas & Easter with you, Mom, in the nursing facility. I wanted to spend every moment I could with you and to make special memories of the tender moments we still had together. For some reason the grief of missing you has begun to set in. I miss you both every day but for this holiday it has really set in the emotions of grief and gratitude.
The grief is all about me but the gratitude is all about you. 8 years ago we did not think you would be with us for Christmas that year. Yes, your children "ram rodded" you to the hospital ER to be checked out. That was when it was discovered that you were in AFib, had congestive heart failure, breast cancer, kidney disease and dementia. The doctors told us that usually patients do not live more than 5 years with all you had going on. Well, you showed them!
I am grateful, Mom and Dad, you gave me a place to heal and the chance to spend much more time with you and helping you. You helped me so much to be able to do that. It was a blessing to me to live on the farm, a blessing to get my own health back in some sort of control and a blessing to help you as your health failed with age. Dad, we expected Mom to leave us long before you would leave us. You showed us!
I am grateful for the past 18 years of living on the family farm and being able to spend so much time with both of you. I am grateful for your trust in me to care for you, help with all your medical, financial, business, and trust needs. I am grateful, Dad, for all I learned from you - the time I spent with you helping build fence, chase cattle, catch and tag baby calves, hook up farm equipment to the tractors, work on equipment, drive a tractor however shaky and jerky I was at it, cutting wood, and building an addition onto the north house. I am grateful, Mom, for all the time we spent together sewing & quilting, going to town weather it be Selden, Colby, Denver or Wichita, allowing me to be with you and your sisters and to get to know each of you as women from the perspective of an adult woman myself rather than that of a child. I am grateful to have been able to travel with you. Mom & Dad traveled differently and I am grateful to have been able to travel with each of you separately and the adventure of traveling with you both together. When I travel now I remember with a chuckle the 30 minute 'quick' potty stops, hour long 'quick' McDonalds breakfast spent people watching, and the constant monolog about each field and crop we drove by along our route.
There is so much more that I have learned from you & so much more I am grateful to you for. I can not begin to express it all. Please know that I treasure the time I was able to spend together with both of you individually and together. I love you always!
Now I have all the 'taking care of business' mostly finished. The storage building we rented to put all your stuff in so your house could be remodeled is now empty. I do have some things in my garage to go through and find a home for. I have some quilts to finish that Judy wants to donate to Prairie Senior Living Complex in memory of you, Mom. Derrick had your house remodeled and had me move into it. I am grateful to still have a home on the family farm.
Now I need to figure out what the new chapter in my own life will look like. I do not yet know what God's plan is for me. I am getting ready to start a program in hopes of finding myself and my purpose in life at this stage.
I am so grateful for you as my parents - your love, the way you raised me, your support, your encouragement, and even your discipline when needed that made me a better person. I miss you more than I can say. I love you in a way only a heart knows and understands.
Till we meet again,
Rose
