"MOM, I'M HOME!"

MOM Passed Away Today... Super Tuesday Feb. 5, 2008.

I've been a bit worried about Mom. She's been lonely without Dad. Been 14 years now. Readers of my books heralding their teachings and strengths know I owe DAD's final words to me, and MOM's final words to him for creating the writer.

The winter has been cold and brutal in Idaho. Thankfully my older sister, Karen lives next door and checks on her. We also email quite abit. She's been deaf for forty years, so emailing has been like a blessing from heaven. We talked about "passing on" twice this week. She was turning 86, and yet didn't seem to comprehend it. She was as much the girl and Mom with all the cares, insecurities, and yet faith, love, and mix of baggage that she'd shouldered her entire life. But she expressed saddness that others she knew were leaving, and that she was stuck in a painfilled body; and though grateful for adult children and their children who kept in touch, felt she was missing another kind of "home" - the kind one finds in the care and comfort of familiar love of husband and others of her generation.

The morning of her death I opened my email and read about her confusion of a dream she had where she had missed a bus that Dad was on. The bus station attendant had told her, "The next bus arrives at 5-12," he said.

"What do you think 5-12 means, Jim?" I replied with a tease, "I guess the bus is coming in 2012, when the Mayan calendar ends." She replied, "Oh well, I guess I can wait that long."

"Time Tested Values -- Oatmeal It Sticks to Your Ribs" -- my post of Jan. 21st, 2008 means more to me now. I hope you will read it and share with others, who, through my words, knew MOM and loved her. It's hard to pay tribute more than I have in the book I dedicated to her while she lived: MOM, The Woman Who Made Oatmeal Stick to My Ribs, so I think I'll live the rest of my life like she wanted me to; like she trusted me to, right up to the last time we shared "I love yous" in our last emails.

Back to the email. I'd like to share her last one with you. See what you read, between the lines:

Dear Jim and Jeanne:
Did i sound sad in my letter? i suppose maybe a little, when we are here and able to still do--------it is hard to give up and let go, so i sense this bit of sadness, but i do not feel a regret at all about going when it is truly, my time. Honestly, I think I can see the handwriting on the wall, already. My children are all going to make it, i will go when the lord says, it's enough.

Jim, did you think I don't believe in the resurrection? Of course, I do. If Dad had not had the promise of choosing his time to go, and had gone that same weekend, I would have known somehow that he had chosen, simply because it became such an overpowering experience for me.

For myself, i still think that dream I had a couple weeks after Dad died could be valid as for when I might go. "The next bus from the Genealogy library would not be back until 5-12????I don't think about that a whole lot and I don't dream such explicite dates either or times.

Then she ended with some personal words and "Love you lots, MOM."

I got a call on my cell from my older sister Janean around 6:00 pm, while waiting for an ordered pizza, (taking it to share with friends who are rather political -- Super Tuesday in full swing, like a good football game, you know.) Janean had just gotten a call from Karen in Idaho. She had found Mom, on the floor, barely breathing. She lifted her into the bed and she took a few more breaths and then passed on.

The next day I talked again to Janean. I asked her, "Do you remember the time Mom passed away?" She answered, "Oh yes. Karen called me at 5:12 pm."

I guess Mom was right in the beginning when she counseled me about the "oatmeal sticking to my ribs" and in the end about timing when she said that she had, "no regret at all about going when it is truly, my time."

Good bye Mom. I love you. And wherever I am, there you are in my heart. Just like I used to say as a kid busting though the front door on Christine Ave. in Simi Valley, I know, with you I can still say, "Mom! I'm home!"