Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: GATHERING (07/14/16)
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TITLE: Close to Her Heart | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sylvia Young
07/21/16 -
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Friends had come from far and wide to wish her well. What they didn’t know was that she’d already had all the blessings anyone could ever have wished for. Still, she gathered all the memories of that day and held them close. Each one of her three children and eight grandchildren had attended. Since then, two great grandchildren had been added to their numbers. Each one was a gift.
Cracking open the cover, she saw her own face as she’d walked through the door that day. She’d truly been surprised, and her face reflected that. How Harold had managed to keep the whole thing a secret was a wonder indeed. He’d never been good at keeping things from her, she thought with a faint smile.
As she flipped through the pages of candid and posed photos, her heart swelled. So many beautiful people had touched her life…and now so many of them were gone.
She’d outlived not only most of her friends, but all of her brothers and sisters even though she wasn’t the youngest. Some of them had been taken by old age, but other by sickness that had never touched her.
Now, in her ninetieth year, she felt every one of her years. Although she loved when the grandchildren visited her, bounding in with all the joy and enthusiasm, it wore her out. Of course it was a good kind of tired, but tired all the same. Sometimes it was easier to live with them in her memories than in real life.
It was also getting hard because her memory was going and younger people had little patience with that kind of thing.
“I just told you, gran,” one or the other would say, not understanding her weakened faculties. And why should they? She certainly hadn’t.
Still, they loved her and she praised God for them. Since Harold had died eight years before, they were constantly checking up on her either in person or over the phone. They’d wanted her to get a computer, but she’d refused.
“That’s for the young,” she would say.
As her birthday approached, she wondered if they would have another get together. It would be lovely to have them all under her roof one more time. And yet, she wondered if she had the strength for it.
Well, if she went to Heaven before that time, she hoped they would celebrate her life instead of mourn it. The time did feel very near.
“Take me whenever You see fit,” she whispered to her Heavenly Father each morning. “I’m ready.” But then every night when she laid her head down, she would smile and sigh. “I guess You didn’t agree.”
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But then, one day, He did agree. And her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and few remaining friends gathered under one roof to remember the wise and wonderful woman who had touched their lives.
“She always had cookies,” one of the younger ones reminisced. "Chocolate chip.”
“Her homemade ones were the best,” an older one remarked. “But once her arthritis got so bad, she had to buy them.”
“They were still good,” the first one defended. “And it wasn’t her fault.”
“No,” a mother smiled wistfully, resting her hand on the child's head. “It wasn’t.”
“Please take a picture,” the oldest son offered to those who had gathered. “We have so many, and I know she would have loved for you to have them.”
Masses of pictures had been spread around the table in the foyer of the church, memories of the ninety years of a long and beautiful life.
Finally, after singing “I’ll Fly Away”, Maggie’s favorite hymn, everyone slowly got into their cars, each of them taking a memory of the beloved woman home with them, tucked into a pocket near their hearts, much as she had carried each one of them throughout her life.
Now, she was finally home.
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