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ELIZABETH’S STORY
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BR89FN9T/
THE DAY I LEARNED MY MOTHER would soon die changed my life forever.
I was forty-six years old, and the news hit me as if I were eleven again, back when I saw my father the final time before he died. My younger sister, Tina, had called to say that Mama was very ill. Within hours my two older sisters and I dropped everything as we rushed to join her at the hospital in Fresno.
Our mother was 84 years old and had lived a full life — a life full of love and heartache, prosperity and poverty, hope and disappointment, life and death. Mama was ready for the promise of the heaven she always believed in. As her children, however, we weren’t quite ready to accept it as eagerly.
The four of us could feel our mother’s love for us from that hospital bed, the way she motioned for us to stand together quietly before her, how she would reach for us one by one, pulling us towards her, gently kissing us, and whispering words of love in our ears so sweetly.
Real love is difficult to understand and takes time to plant the seeds and cultivate them, but no one stands up to the challenge better than a mother. On that day, I finally understood the genuine depth of my mother’s love, right there in that hospital room.
The love Mama shared with us that day was real and heartfelt, the rare kind of love that few people truly experience in life. Mama believed the entire purpose of one’s life was to love those around us. Fifteen years earlier she wrote as much in the preface to her memoirs:
“When we love others, we bring life to them so that they can grow. And we grow as human beings when we love others.”
Mama recovered enough to leave the hospital, but her health no longer allowed her to live at home with Tina. Instead, she lived her remaining days in a nursing home in Fresno, California, where Tina visited faithfully. During the last few months of her life, and even after her death, I discovered unique aspects of my mother’s life that I never knew beforehand. Her life is the story of a love so real, so incredibly determined, that its true depth can barely be expressed in written words alone. I can only hope some of the rays of that love break through the fog of life and shine upon those who read her story today.
— Randy Kinnamon – Tacoma, Washington