Today I would like to appreciate God for 53 birthdays we had my mom.

See, I truly believe he didn't really want her on this Earth for a long time.

From the time she was a baby, he kept trying to take her back to Heaven.

When she was tiny, tiny she spiked this fever that was so high it burned her teeth.  He wanted her that day, but left her here on Earth.

Years later, the next thing happened...
My mom was 8 years old and dressed in the same clothes as her cousin.  Someone sent her out for something from the store.  She walked along some old train tracks, where trains rarely came.  Well, wouldn't you know it...a train started coming.  She was on a bridge...a train track and had nowhere to go.  She was 8 years old and so scared.

The next part of this story was told to her by her mom and a nurse (who happened to be the train conductor's wife)...

She jumped and landed in a ravine but on a large piece of cement.  She broke all of her ribs, was given her Last Rights and pronounced dead at the hospital.

The next part of this story, she rarely told because, in her words, "Katie, it makes me sound crazy."  She swears she didn't jump.  She has said, since the moment she finally woke up in the hospital that "my Guardian Angel pushed me."  When she was unconscious in the hospital she says she saw lots of people in a brightly lit area (almost like a hallway).  She wasn't scared because even though she didn't know who they were, she knew them.  She said they told her, "You have to go back Peggy.  It's not your time yet."

Eventually my mom healed and God did not keep her that time.  A massive scar, minus 1 Spleen, and lots of internal damage later; she healed after she had been pronounced dead.

(She did earn the family name of Bless Her Heart by her brother who was a little annoyed that she kept trying to die so nobody ever cared that she was such a bully to her brother)


Years later she saw some pictures of people and said to her mom, "Who is that?  I know that person."  Her mom smiled and replied, "Peggy, that's my brother and he died long before you were born.  You don't know him."  She said, with conviction, "Yes, I know him.  He was there when I had my accident." This happened several more times with other family members she had never met.

And so that little girl grew up, met the love of her life and bore 2 children .

Then, in 1987 she got sick, very sick.
She stopped breathing one night.  An ambulance was called and off she and her husband went to the hospital while the neighbor sat with her soundly sleeping children.

She got sicker and sicker with pneumonia and because she didn't have a Spleen, it was a bit worse.
In fact near death...again.

But then...she got better...again.  God left her for us, again.

She taught school.  She raised kids.  And her kids went off to college and the Navy.

And then she was diagnosed with cancer and the prognosis wasn't good.  Chemo and radiation, numerous stays in the Intensive Care Unit with dangerously low white blood cell counts, we got ready to say good-bye.

But then...she got better...again.


She danced with her son on the day he wed the woman of his dreams, her new daughter-in-law.  She reminded her daughter that no matter what, she would be there.  She took a road trip with her soulmate and recaptured absolute magic.  She visited family and friends, near and far.  She assured her parents, both sets, that they would be fine.

And then she got sick again and the doctors told her that this time, she wouldn't be getting better.

And on October 23, 2007...she died.


And in my head, this time all of those same people that once lined that lighted area when she was 8 years old were there again and this time they said, "Ok, we're ready for you now.  You did a great job and they'll be just fine."  God was standing at the end and said, "I need you now.  I can't wait anymore and you can rest easy, they'll be just fine."



Thanks for all the birthdays you kept her here God.  Hope you're celebrating her today, up there.