Walking In Glory

I had intended to resume something more like regular posting this past weekend.
Life had other plans.

I don't generally blabber deeply personal details.

But this weekend, my beloved mother, described by more than one person outside our family as the Katie Elder of my clan, after nearly a 90-year run, and in declining health recently, passed quietly and quickly in her own bed, at home, relatively painlessly, and with family and friends at the bedside.

Rather than being overwhelmed with grief, I am thankful for the easiness of her passing, the ending of her struggle, and the fact that she went exactly as she wished, where she wished, and how she wished, without any fuss or fanfare, and without being a burden on anyone.

I know where she's spending Eternity, and she'd booked those reservations over a lifetime, so the only sadness involved on my part is that the suddenness didn't permit me to be there at the end, and thus the inability to say that final goodbye.

At some point, when things calm down, I may perhaps compose a proper tribute, but if you mixed equal parts June Cleaver, Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies, and Maureen O'Hara, you'd get Mom. She was tough as nails and feisty as kittens, and the red hair and Irish ancestry wasn't just for show.

She lived through three sons, long enough to see grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who if they do no more than live a life as well-regarded as she lived hers will be well-off indeed.