Sorrows like sea billows...

Today I got one of those emails you never want to get.

Strangely enough, I had been standing in church, tears streaming down my face during the last song, but totally confused about why I was so sad. I left church and briefly talked with a friend, still teary-eyed, and went to my office, put my head down on my desk and cried. Yes, it has been a hard week, but not THIS hard, I thought! Why was I crying?

Then I opened my computer, checked my messages and heard from my mom that my Gramma Stewart has been in the hospital this weekend, and is now in hospice care. My spirit must have known something before my brain did. The doctors don't expect her to live more than a couple days now that they've taken her off her medication. She's been in an Alzheimer's intensive care unit for about 6 months, and all my family knows that it is time for her to go home to Our Father. We are excited for her to be free of the pain and confusion that have been her life for so long, for her body to be made into the eternal body her soul was meant for. It is a beautiful thing to have such hope.

Nevertheless, it was extremely hard to think about the fact that I'm going to be away from home these next few weeks, when I wish I could be there with everyone - especially my aunt and my dad. My aunt has had a really difficult time with the reality of what is happening. These are the times that the reality of what I'm doing - how far away I am, how much I love my family - really hit me, and it's hard.

In honor of my grandma, Rosebud Opal Anderson Stewart, (and my whole gypsy family, really) I'm posting a piece of writing I did a couple years ago, somewhat inspired and influenced by the book she wrote about her life history and time as a pastor's wife, married to my grandpa. She wrote all about being a new bride in a parsonage that overlooked a cemetary in Little Mount, Iowa during World War II. She wrote about their best years, when my grandpa was a pastor of a church in Muskegon, Michigan, where my father and second aunt were born. She wrote about the color of curtains in their houses, and all the different cars my grandpa bought and sold over the years. She wrote with pride about finishing her Bachelor's degree at Colorado Teacher's College (now UNC, in my hometown of Greeley), years after dropping out to marry my grandpa - and then going on to teach a whole generation of young Brighton first-graders how to read. She is an amazing woman, who I can't wait to really know and talk with when I see her again. :)