Last night I should’ve ended with “so now I sleep” instead of “so now I wait”. To sleep is to imply that you are temporarily at peace and have let go of your cares. To be waiting is to still be wanting something. It’s true that’s where I was but it wasn’t enough to make it the end. Oh well. I woke up several times in the night, once because the room was cold.

I left around 10:45 from the parking lot and was home again around 12:20. I texted my dad to let him know, and my sisters, and my cousin, and my husband, and called my grandma again. Josh and the kids were out to lunch. When they came home I gave them all big hugs. I have a side to my personality that’s hard to show, these surges of happiness.

Surges of anything can overwhelm people. I started playing and singing Celine Dion while we were in Florida. I didn’t do it for very long. It was still pretty early and my cousin’s youngest daughter was still asleep on the couch. I was happy to be there, even under the circumstances. At first I had considered turning around and going back home.

I didn’t know what we were going to do. For months I’d had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to go down if/when Aunt Susie needed help. That’s what I was going down there for. There are things that went down in the end that I feel like should not have happened. She was upset about it too, acting as her own nurse even hours before she died.

Sometimes when our plans change we can look back and say, “Oh, if it had gone the original way then such and such would never have happened” and the story is spun with a glittering God-angle. Not that God isn’t constantly working things out all the time, but sometime his timing and reasoning remains hidden from our understanding and sight.

And in those times we walk by faith. My aunt is with the Lord and she is at peace now. I was trying just to be a sweet and comforting peaceful presence, not too vocal, not too loud, not flamboyant or with aims to rescue. Of my uncle and cousin and his family I thought, “Well these were her most special people in life. To love them is to still love her.”

But even that wasn’t fully it. They couldn’t just be special to me because of her. My uncle, my cousin, his family, they are special to me because they are special to God. Period. And over the past couple of years we’ve been blessed to have had more frequent connecting points in time which have allowed many of us to know each other again.

So all that to say, I’m glad we went. I had asked my cousin straight up on that morning, “Is it too much for us all to come?” He said maybe three might be too many. By then my aunt had already cancelled her plans. So that is when Jess went one way and Liz and I went another. We hugged and my uncle said when we left we’d gotten him off to a good start.