"February/2011"
Friday morning devotions at 9:00 a.m. with brother Steve and sister-in-law Cindy began shortly after my husband Tad died suddenly in September 2008 of complications from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurism. After nearly forty years of not going to church and minimizing God, there was no doubt He was drawing me back into His loving arms. As I began making baby steps into becoming a fully committed Christian, I could feel something was different this time. Notice I didn’t say “back” into being fully committed because that had never happened to me. Despite growing up in the church, going to a Christian college and making several trips down to the altar, there had always remained an emptiness; a sort of hole in my heart. In fact, I couldn’t even say Jesus’ name and hadn’t been baptized because I felt so unworthy. I didn’t realize it then, but it was because over the years there had been no spiritual growth. I knew something wasn’t right but didn’t know what to do about it. Though I didn’t talk about it, others like my college unit mates knew this, but didn’t say anything. Well...there was this one time. It was during my junior year when Tad and I were preparing to get married in March of 1967. You have to know that Tad had never attended our college, nor was he a Christian, even so, they all loved him. However, there was a day when a few brave souls gently expressed their concern that they thought as long as Tad and I were together, I’d never be a Christian. Funny thing... they were right! September 3, 2008 was when my real Christian life and a fully committed relationship with Jesus began! (To find out the rest of the story, read “Tad” of “These Golden Threads”.)
Steve and Cindy had prayed for me for 35 years to come back to the Lord. It wasn’t the full forty because there were about five years that they had to get right with God. Their morning devotions had always been the publication “Our Daily Bread” and they suggested it to me. It’s dated, has a story with an extra “Insight” and related daily scripture verse. Somewhere along the way, we decided we should get together weekly via phone, them in northern B.C. and me in Tucson. Friday mornings at 9:00 a.m. became the designated day and time. We’ve done pretty good keeping it up over the years though nowadays it may have to be Friday at 3:00 or Saturday at whatever time, but our Devos still happen. However, back in 2011 we were usually pretty punctual…
January 1st, 2011 started the year off with record low temperatures. If I remember right, the overnight low was 17 degrees. Since 1999 after building and living in our Oro Valley home, we hadn’t experienced any freezing problems. However, there was this time the overhead pipes in the breezeway had frozen during the night. While I was next door at the neighbor’s New Year’s Day brunch, they thawed… Returning to the house walking down the driveway, it looked like a waterfall across the length of the covered entryway. The water was running down and inside the front walls flooding the living room, the adjoining dining room and was starting to make its way into the rest of the house when I got home. I hate to think what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten home when I did. The folks at the party had been outside on the patio and had heard running water coming from my house. As I was leaving the party, they said that if there was a problem to let them know. After turning off the water to the house, I called them. Here they came, all in their New Year’s Day Brunch finery, all fed and “watered”, ready to move furniture, antique hutches, leather sofa, rocking chairs, etc., anything that could get damaged. Fortunately, my baby grand piano was on casters high enough to avoid getting wet. They carefully removed twelve original watercolors off the 10’ front wall before water could seep through the wall board. Due to the help of friends, neighbors from the party and because the restoration company was so quick to respond that afternoon, damage was actually minimal. Of course, the carpets were ruined, but setting up industrial fans so soon to dry out the walls and baseboards is what really made the difference. As the house was almost twelve years old, I had been contemplating using some of Tad’s insurance money for a non-structural updating. This just kickstarted the whole process.
However, maybe the real “damage” was that my cat Suzy might have been traumatized by the noise from 12 huge industrial fans in the front of house. For two weeks, 24/7 it sounded like I had B52 airplanes in there. Suzy would slink from the back of the house to the laundry room for her food and potty box usage. It wasn’t funny, but it was funny looking if you happened into the laundry room when she was doing her business. You could only see her tail, absolutely straight, quivering as it was sticking out the hole of the covered litterbox. Not sure she ever recovered…
It was Thursday morning, February 17, 2011 with renovations in full swing, that the phone rang. It was my brother Steve in Fort St John, BC to tell me Mom was failing and that her time would probably be soon. “Do you need me?” I asked. “No”, he said “we’ll be with her”. Mom had been suffering from dementia for some thirteen years. We have often thought that it might have had its beginnings in 1998 when she had peritonitis and the surgery to fix it. Since Dad, who had been her primary caregiver died two years previously, she had been in a care facility. I was okay with not going at this time because in October I had visited the family in Fort St John and my heart’s last memory of Mom was of her… smiling. “I’ll be up for the memorial. “I said.
The next morning, Friday, February 18, 2011, the house was alive with workman in just about every room of the house when the phone rang. Reaching for the phone, I glanced at the clock. It was just after 9:00 a.m. “Ah”, I thought, “Devotion Time.” But, as soon as I heard Stevie’s voice, I knew... “She’s gone”, I said. He said Yes, but you won’t believe it! It seems that Kathy, Karolyn, Steve and Cindy were sitting around Mom’s bed chatting and laughing when the nurse came in to let them know that it wouldn’t be much longer. Steve, from where he was standing at the foot of bed, said he had a clear view of the clock on the wall over Mom’s head. He told me that as Mom was slipping away, he kept looking at the clock… “Patti, I couldn’t help it”. Then precisely at 9:00 a.m. and as the nurse recorded the time, Mom was face-to-face with Jesus. Hallelujah!
I’m sure you realize that Mom never knew about our Friday at 9:00 a.m. devotions, and even if she did, don’t quite know how she could have pulled this one off. My sister Kathy added, “Mom must have thought, well, I guess Patti’s not coming…”
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