Happy Birthday, Mom

Today my mom would have been 81 years old. This is her high school senior picture, 1945. It's still hard to think of her on special days without my heart breaking. I miss her so much. But if she were still alive, I don't know if she would even know who I was, the dementia was getting worse all the time. Her dear friend, Elaine, wore one of Mom's shirts to church. She said she did in honor of Mom's birthday. How sweet of her to want to remember her friend, especially today. This was "Sanctity of Human Life" Sunday at church. The Sunday School lesson was about honoring all lives. So many times this Sunday is focused on the killing of unborn babies, but our lesson went on to include all humans--from the womb to the tomb. And in the discussion of the lesson, we talked about life support systems, feeding tubes and the removal of such from critically or terminally ill patients. It made me question the decision not to have Mom put on life support to see if she would recover. The doctor had told me that she would probably not recover and Mom had said the night before she wanted to die--but today for a few minutes I felt like I took her life. Thanks to the members of the Sunday School class, they helped me see that it was God's will and that I was simply following her request. It's still hard and especially today when I could have been with her helping her celebrate her birthday. I guess, though, celebrating with Jesus is better.

I love my Sunday School class. I love being the leader of the group. I have learned so much from them--I call them my Sages. They know the Bible so much better than I do, yet they allow me to "lead" the study each Sunday. They are such a blessing to me. We have some really good discussions and I hardly ever can get us through the whole lesson.

What a wonderful week ahead. No meetings! No appointments! It's a free week! (Other than the library.) Yeah!