Gosh, I Wish You Were Here...

Were you watching today, Mom, as your girls gathered to shower the newest member of the family, Maya, into the fold? I believe you believed in a heaven thereafter and so you might have been looking down today to see Bobby, your first grandchild, with Maya, your first great-granddaughter. Did you see your daughter Kerrie hold Maya so tenderly as you once held Kerrie’s firstborn Bobby those many years ago? Gosh, how I remember how proud you were to be a grandmother - an "Oma" -- for the first time.

I think that if you really are in Heaven, you have the ability to watch many places on Earth simultaneously (sort of like split-screen tv). So, while you were watching Maya being showered into the world by the women, you could also peek at the men who were banished to a local bar. Did you listen in as your grandson Corey gave advice to Bobby on parenthood, Corey having now had two and half years experience? Did you smile as you watched your two grandsons sharing the joy of being called “Daddy”? Did you marvel at the circle of life that you created; the circle that goes on despite the knife-edge gap that you left behind? Gosh, how I remember how you worried whether or not your life would have meaning.

Did you focus in on the moment when your eldest daughter, Kerrie, carried on your tradition? Did you delight in the fact that she made little Maya a knitted sweater and bonnet from a pattern that you left behind when you left us all behind? Did you recognize that Kerrie has the same loving hands that you had, each and every time you welcomed a child into this world with your knitted treasures? Gosh, I remember how your knitted love was what held us together.

Did you see Kerrie crying and telling Maya’s mommy that it was the gift you would have given to little Maya had Maya been graced with you in her world? Did you know that your life would have such an impact on those you left behind? Did you see how each and every woman in that room knew that a gift made by hand, stitch by stitch, row by row, carried love that would last a lifetime and into eternity? Gosh, I wish I could ask you -- Do you know how much you still live on today in our hearts and in our hands.

But, I don’t really have to ask these questions, Mom. I know. You were there today. You were there in Maya's little hands with perfect nails that will one day be painted as you painted ours. People will say to Maya, as they say to your girls and to your girls' girls, and now to your great- granddaughter Maya, "what wonderful nails you have!". Maya will know that you live on. Gosh, Mom, if only Maya will know how your love weaves its way through our family.

The love that you gave lives on, stitch by stitch. Knit, pearl, love.

Gosh, I wish you were here.