Virgie Bell's View

I don't know why Christmas was so much harder for me this year. Perhaps it was naive of me to think that as we faced our third Christmas without Aaron, since we had already made it through the first and second and somehow been able to pull into a new year each time, that the pain would be less, but as so many times in my life, I was caught completely unaware.

I have become used to the fact that as Thanksgiving rolls around, thoughts of my brother Mickey hit me like a head on collision. I should be used to it after so many years, but it seems that is never to be. Perhaps it’s just as well that I am blind-sided each time or I would dread the season all year long.

Oh I have so much to be thankful for. Never a day goes by that I don't realize I should count my blessings. I remember a song from my childhood. Count your blessings, name them one by one.... we sang them often in the small little country church I attended after we moved to Fieldton, Texas.

I honestly try to be upbeat. I get very busy getting ready for the big meals and family get-togethers. Maybe we’re not supposed to adore another person to the point that it is almost a form of worship, but what do you do? You cannot un-love someone who’s always loved you. If you’ve been betrayed or deeply hurt, then it’s possible I suppose. But if the loved one has never been anything but a source of joy and happiness, then all the sudden they’re gone from the radar of your life, I suppose the happiness we felt with them just becomes a form of longing. But they have passed onto a great and wonderful life where God shall wipe away all tears. I try to remind myself of this. I don't know how people cope without the hope of the resurrection.

Today I want to pass on a couple of things that have taught me that it is a viable and reasonable thing to look forward to futures with those that have gone before. No, this is not some great sermon by some illustrious pastor or messenger; it’s something so much more profound for the simplicity of its honesty.

When my grandmother, Mama Curry, passed away I was with her. In fact, I was the one who closed her eyes after she had drawn her last breath. The thing that transpired before she stepped over to the other side was one of the greatest testimonies I’ve ever witnessed. My grandmother had been in a coma for days, the days seemed to become weeks. It was a living nightmare for me. I remember Uncle Doug, her youngest son, coming early mornings and we’d set outside her room while I gave him the report of what the night before had been like for his mother. It had been something that would have made a nightmare seem charming, for she had suffered so very much. Uncle Doug looked at me and asked, “Virgie Bell, what are we going to do?” He was in so much pain that I hurt to see it.

“Why don't we let her decide?”

“She doesn't even know she’s dying,” was his reply.

I mentally filed this away as ridiculous. When I was a young girl, I had spent two weeks at MaMa Curry’s every summer. I knew this woman possessed a knowledge and understanding beyond anyone's ken. This little overweight, beautiful, wonderful grandmother pooh-poohed every one of us that thought we were so much more educated and worldly than she was. Her education came from within, almost as if by osmosis, a deep and comfortable fit. She had us all beat, hands down.

Right before she passed, she looked up and said "Jesus take my hand ...oh look at heaven, isn't it beautiful?” and then she said my grandfather’s name, “MARK, "and she was gone. I can’t go to Lubbock today that I don't think of her. She and I rode that bus all over Lubbock and we did things together that I will never forget in this lifetime and I miss her to this day.

The other thing I consider as one of my greatest glimpses into the great beyond was when one day as I was in my bathroom where I have a crystal hung in the window. Kayla was in the next room. I called out, “Come here!” She toddled into the bathroom and I pointed to the rainbow that had just begun its wonderful ballet of color upon the stage of my bathroom floor.

Not quite three yet, Kayla squatted down and tried to pick up this mystical dancer; she tried again the second time, then looked up at me with complete assurance and said in that sweet innocence found only in the wonder and belief in a child’s voice “It’s God.”

I wanted to share these two most inspiring stories of my own with the readers of Gunz Up, and to wish everyone a blessed and assuring New Year

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