So I'm going to try to give you a bit more of the story of the last week or so. It is so clear when you hear even just Rhonda and my story, how God's hand has been all over this struggle for us, redeeming it in lots of little ways.
So we have been trying to find a new house to buy in St. Louis for awhile. We put ours on the market in I think April and found that God obviously wanted it to sell, because we sold it FSBO in 9 days! We started focusing on finding a house for our family, and were very close to buying two houses since then. One was a bit out of our price range but we REALLY liked it, so we were going to go ahead. However, had we bought it I would be stressed beyond belief right now, because I would have needed to work all summer to pay the taxes on it. The second house we actually even had a contract on it, but found that it needed like 17K of foundation work, so we backed out of that contract. A blessing, as we've thought back, because it was a serious fixer-upper, and I needed to be spending all summer working on it to get it ready to live in before I go back to work in late July. So just from a house perspective, we are free to be up here with my dad and siblings for a long time, which is really God's timing!
Last weekend, Friday I think, mom was still in the hospital, and Rhonda started saying "why don't we just go up there now?" She somehow knew we'd need to be up here sooner than the early July that we had originally planned on. So Rhonda's dad and brother said they'd come help us load as much as we could on Sunday, and then we got some extra help from church and just loaded up as much as we could on Sunday. We had a ton of help come and move almost all of our stuff on Sunday night, thanks to my mother and father in-law, Paul and Sharon, as well as Bruce and LynDelle and family, Dave and Nick and Jared, Tom and Connie, Mel, Peach and Rich, and that was just the relations that came! We also had a multitude of friends come, Nathan, Jeremy, Stan and Abby, Brooke and Phil, Rick, Steve, Andrew and Daniel, and probably more that my fried brain isn't remembering right now. It was just amazing, even moreso since we threw it together in a day basically! We got much of the house moved, and spent Monday during the day pakcing up more while another friend Mandy took the boys for us. We then realized that we were going to need to leave earlier than planned, and packed up our suitcases and stuff to get ready. We were just signing the paperwork to sell our house with Brooke when my sister Jenna and brother Garrett called and said we needed to fly up immediately. We knew that there was no way we could fly up and get in as early as we wanted, so we threw everything in the van that we thought we'd need and drove off at 6PM on Monday night.
A couple of notes here: We were not all the way moved out of our house by any means. The carport and the living room were still pretty full of stuff, not to mention the cleaning that needed to happen still. Paul and Sharon took over for us, with the help of other family, and moved out the rest of our stuff as well as cleaned our house for the new owners. That help was beyond amazing, and we felt fine just leaving the place without finishing knowing we were leaving it in good hands! You never realize how much people love you until you really see how far they're willing to go for you... Thanks everyone.
So we left at 6PM on Monday evening, and began what is typically a 24 hour drive for us. Small kids and all, we usually stop for a couple nights and extended meal breaks to make it doable for the kids. Rhonda and I don't have a good history of driving overnight, so we don't ever do it. This time tho, we didn't have any choice, and only stopped for dinner Monday night, gas, breakfast Tuesday morning, and more gas/bathrooms. God kept us safe through some crazy rainstorms, even with the worn out tires I didn't have time to replace, and kept the police away from us, even as I drove pretty fast, especially once we crossed the border and I knew that time was getting shorter.
21 hours later we arrived in Regina, unsure of whether mom would be able to even know we were there. We had been getting updates all through the night, listening to mom breath over the cell phones, and understanding that her time was very short. When we pulled into the parking lot there were tons of family, brothers and sisters, cousins, everyone waving us in. I barely put the car in park before I ran out and followed my brother Garrett through the hospital and up the stairs to mom's room. Never ran that fast in a hospital before! I got up there to a full room, and my mom lying in the bed in the middle of the room. Everyone in the room was telling her of my impending arrival for the past couple of hours, and when I came in they told her "Here's Duff, here's your son."
I went to my mom and just said "mom," and she raised her eyes, looked up at me and raised her arms to give me the most amazing hug, and last, hug I've ever had from my mom! It was like she was saving up her energy for me, to give me that goodbye, which all my other brothers and sister had also gotten. It was also the last time she responded that much as she slowly slipped away into Jesus' arms.
We all spent Tuesday at the hospital, and overnight. It was a really sweet time for our family, taking turns talking to mom, holding her hands and loving her. We sang to her, played the guitar for her, and read to her from one of her favorite books, The Shack. Amazing read, even if you don't have time for it, make the time. It's the book that my dad read to my mom while she was recovering from her first surgery last May/June 2008, and the one they bought for all of their kids to read after that time.
At about 1:30AM on Thursday morning, mom took her last breath and incredibly peacefully slipped into the arms of Jesus. We were almost finished reading The Shack to her, and after singing one last time to her, having Claude, her friend and pastor, pray over her and for us all, we read the last few pages to her and began to say our final goodbyes to her. We packed up our stuff and took one walk I'll never forget, a group of 15 or so of us out of the hospital and home at about 4:30AM on Thursday morning. You never forget times like that, the overwhelming feelings of complete hopelessness and loss. We got home and just wandered around until eventually we were able to collapse for awhile.
Since then we've been surrounded by friends and family, people hanging out with us and loving us, dropping off food enough to feed a small army, which we are when we're all together! The love of people from my folks' church has been amazing, and has given us such a boost, especially dad. The calls from friends and family have been such an encouragement, as well as the emails, postings on Facebook to all our pages, especially moms.
This has become something of a book, and if you didn't make it through it, I don't mind. I think I wrote it more for me than anyone else, though I'm glad to share it with you. While I feel like life in general sucks right now, it will get better. I'm still constantly thinking (excuse the honesty of my language) "what the hell is going on here?" I am also reminded of the amazing comfort of the Holy Spirit in my life, and my family's lives. My dad is struggling along with us, and we're doing our best to support each other through it all. Thanks again for all your prayers, notes, calls, and love for us, we cherish them all so much!
