Legacy

Grandchildren are the crown of grandparents, and parents are the glory of their children.
Proverbs 17:6

I am so in awe of God's sweet timing right now I can hardly stand it. Today marks the 13 year anniversary of my Mom's last day on this earth, and of course my mind is flooded with memories. I see it as no accident that right now, in my continuing Bible study on Ruth, the author is talking about the incredible legacy her grandfather left her. "At its simplest, I've been given a stunning heritage I did nothing to earn, and that's the beauty of legacy. It's a gift we leave for others."

My Mom was amazing. Ask anybody who knew her! There is not enough paper, no lap top large enough, to write about all that she left me. Stricken with Multiple Sclerosis in her mid 30's, Jeanne Louise Lee, former school teacher, could have been anything but gracious. Anything but a prayer warrior. Anything but a quick-witted conversationalist. Anything but merciful. Anything but completely confident that God had not abandoned her. Anything but faithful. But she was all these with a thousand etceteras.

As strange as it sounds, the fact that she had this dreaded disease did not make her "sick" in our eyes. On the contrary, she was healthy as a horse. She just couldn't walk. It was chronic progressive MS. It started in one leg and she only needed one crutch. Then two. Then a wheelchair sometimes. Then a wheelchair all the time. By my senior year in high school, she was completely bed ridden. It was a debilitating, awful disease and it put her body, heart and soul through agonizing, grueling effects that would make the strongest of men buckle. In fact, most men would have left at the sight of their tennis playing, long-legged beauty being robbed of her body little by little. But she and my Daddy were not most people. And still, my Mom was not sick. Our lives were just a little different. She couldn't be left alone for long periods of time, and eventually not at all. So I wasn't allowed to have a job during my teens. Not a problem! Our dinnertime meals went from her delicious four course cuisine to Steak Umm sandwiches and tater tots. I love tater tots! We had major family meetings in her bathroom rather than at the kitchen table, but that was just because it was so difficult to pick up a 130 lb woman and get her muscle-spasming body into the sitting position on the toilet. Once we got her there, she preferred staying a while! So we'd all hang out in the bathroom. That's not so weird. Nor is the fact that sometimes, when trying to get her back into bed, we would get the giggles at the crazy things her legs were doing and we'd completely miss. And no one was laughing harder than Mom.

The last year of her life was very different and traumatic for our family. It wasn't marked by laughter and was anything but what we had become accustomed to. She contracted pneumonia, and after several trips to the ER and 3 hospital stays, a very wise and merciful doctor finally caught on to what was happening. The MS had made it's way into her lungs and throat. She could hardly breathe and she could no longer swallow. She needed oxygen, a feeding tube and a tracheostomy. As my Daddy, sister and I stood reeling from this news, the doctor explained she simply couldn't survive any other way and asked us to make a decision. In just a matter of hours, after over 25 years of "only" having lost the use of her limbs but still plenty able to holler from the bathroom when she was ready to get up, my mother lay in ICU unable to speak because of the hole cut in her throat and the tube inserted into it, forcing air into her lungs. After several days of just accepting, dealing, comforting and accepting again, we slowly got the hang of things and adapted to our new normal. Mom got great at mouthing slowly, and we became excellent lip readers and learned all the literal ins & outs of a ventilator.  Her condition would both improve and decline several times over those fall and winter months. We even got to bring her home for Christmas, at which time I discovered I was expecting my first baby. But her time at home was short, and things only became worse. Finally, on August 5, 1998, with our precious family of four there in her room at the long term care facility, her heart quietly stopped. Within a few moments all the machines were silent, and we had a funeral to plan.

As I said earlier, MS is a debilitating disease. If there's a more descriptive word for not only steals your physical health but all your dignity as well, feel free to put it in place of debilitating. But as unusual as our usual was, and as painful as those last weeks and months were, they could not rob me of the mother I had for the first 30 years of my life. There had been laughter. And I hold it close as one of the most precious gifts my parents gave me. I remember her teaching me how to fold my socks together and put them in my antique white dresser drawer when I was 5. I remember her using those same socks to roll my hair on Saturday night. I remember how she would frost her hair and let me pull it through the holes in that crazy cap that made her look like an alien. I hold dear how much she loved Fritos and Coke and said that Pepsi was made and consumed by communists. I'm proud to be an OU football fan simply because she was, and I'm proud of the fact that she was a Dallas Cowboys fan when no one else was. I remember her Bible in her lap every day, her adorable red reading glasses on her face. I remember turning the pages for her when she couldn't. I loved putting her make-up on while my sister did her hair and hearing her say, as if I hadn't heard it before, "Make my eyebrows look like commas." I remember her impeccable taste in clothes. The smell of her perfume. How she taught us that beige is a real color. I love that everytime my parents would go somewhere, my dad would come home, smiling, and say, "Girls, your mom was the belle of the ball as always." I remember how much she loved him. How fervently she would pray for me. For all of us. I remember the sound of her voice. I remember walking the halls of hospitals and nursing homes and hearing sweet people call out, "You must be Jeanne's daughter! You look just like your momma!" I see her in her granddaughter's face. I love that I bear her name. I remember the masses of people who came to her funeral. How we celebrated an incredible life that day, and how proud I was. And so grateful that God would choose her, a woman of noble character, as my mother. As the wonderful grandma I would tell this baby about. I remember that just 4 weeks after that glorious celebration of a life lived with faith and grace, I would welcome Tristan Nicole to the world and speak of the Grandma she never met. I remember the precious moments I've had with both my daughters as I tell them how countless people said to my sister and I that day in August, and many times since, "I know we've never met, but I knew your mother. And her faith and her testimony changed my life."

Legacy. A stunning heritage I did nothing to earn. What a gift.