Eulogy- Helen Maye Walsh

Good morning girls.  We laid my precious mom down beside my father yesterday around 11:30. It was a beautiful service and something most phenomenal happened at grave site. I will share one day soon. 

It was just 72 days from when we laid Dad down to rest that we laid mother beside him. 

I do not understand all things that has happened the past 72 days but I guess it is not for any of us to understand all. Both my mom and dad's life were never really in my hands. I was only a servant to them. I did not add to their days nor did I take away from their days.  I want to blog about some things that were told me by another blogger, but those things need to wait. 

I spoke at my mom's home going and wanted to share it with you.  

I will be gone for a while.  I am in need of such healing and learning who I am. So take a minute and read her Eulogy ..........  it was my mother.. I miss her this morning with an emptiness that words cannot even begin to explain. BUT she is rejoicing with the angles......

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 MY MOM

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

My mom was a very quiet, shy almost, she was more introverted than not. She never spoke her feelings out loud and when asked a question she would just cock her head to the side and shrug her shoulder. I wonder sometimes

I never heard her voice her opinion of politics and not even the Christianity that she held private in her heart. Asking her what she was thinking was a lesson at futility. She did not share much

I never knew her favorite color or her favorite food. Come to think of it, it must have been beans and weenies or mac and cheese………. Bless her heart she was a terrible cook.

But she loved hats and flowers and singing.

BUT throughout the past many years you would find my mom sitting in her comfy chair reading her bible. She always had a little note pad of some kind or the other where she would make notes as she studied. Page after page after page she would write. Scripture after scripture she would pen. The heart and the soul and the inner tenderness of my mother lie in these notes written on these pages.

The word of God in Luke 2:19 tells us… But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

I liken that to my mom. Yes she was quiet and spoke very few words, but all those things that she studied over the years she kept hidden in her heart.

How do I know that? 

Monday afternoon while laying in her hospital bed she began to talk, oh you could not understand much of what she was saying and my son Chris said it was the most he had ever heard her talk. But every once in a while she would speak just as clear as I am speaking now and it would be the word of God.

Son of God, Lord of Lord and King of Kings………. And the truth shall set me free.

She spoke of forgiveness once and then on to Jesus the redeemer and savior of the world. And on she spoke. Sometime around Monday midnight she began to sing.

Precious memories, In the Sweet by and by . My Jesus I Love Thee..Coming up out of her spirit man was her communication with the one that she knew best. Up out her spirit man came the praise and adoration of the one that she found to be the lover of her soul. 

The veil from her eyes were being lifted and she was seeing and communing with things that we can only imagine.

Tuesday morning she became unresponsive and never spoke another word. She had seen across Jordan and nothing else needed to be said.

A quiet woman, yes……. A woman of few words, yes………..but a woman that was rooted and grounded in the faith. A woman that pondered all things that she had invested into her heart……..

And as she was just hours from heavens door she gave us that would remain behind just a peek into the beauty of the heart of a woman named Helen.

She had a personal intimate relationship with the Christ who saved her. And on Wednesday morning around 1:15 am the Christ , the lover of her soul honored her request to go home … and she slipped into her eternity.

I look forward to sitting and talking with my mom one day………. For as she said sometime on Monday…….. and the truth shall set me free……… Mom is home and mom is free and I bet she is talking up a storm……….

This one's with me - NewSong

Mom Has Crossed Over

Helen Maye Walsh 

December 30, 1919 - September 15, 2010

FAITH WHEN DARKNESS COMES

When the night kneels down by your bed

In the time of your sadness,

Remember O child of the mountains

This word of the law:

The night is the shadow of God

Who made you for gladness,

And your sorrows are less than your strength

Which He foresaw.

Preston Clark

Mom left me this morning around 1:15 A.M. Wednesday morning........  I cannot even begin to tell you my sorrow, but she has been reunited with Dad. She has hugged her mom and the brother that she has not seen in 60 years.  She beholds the face of Christ.

 

Leaving the blog and FB For A Few Months

My sweet friends.  You each mean the world to me and over the past three years plus you have brought me much love, fun and friendship. I am going to leave the blog for a few months, only the Lord knows when I will be back.

As most of you know we put my sweet mom into a Psychiatric hospital a week and half ago thinking that we were doing her a good thing. That was a week ago this past Thursday and this past Friday after only 7 days there I went in and took her out. I am not going to go into all of what happened to her but on Saturday morning (yesterday) I called 911 and had her taken by ambulance to the good hospital.  

She has been there since yesterday morning and after all the test we saw the Dr tonight.  Mother will be released most likely on Wednesday morning to a nursing home here in town with Hospice.  She is mal-nourished, she has gastric bleeding, she has pneumonia, her CHF has been left unchecked and she had to have two unites of blood as soon as they could get her admitted. She had a white cell count of 14 and infection in her bladder. I do not know of all the indignities that she suffered there but I know of a few.  In her honor I am not going to publish them. 

Mom has quit eating and her protein levels is 4 and I guess that is severe malnourishment.

Both her legs are severally swollen and the right one is very large and very hot. Her feet when I took her out were the size of balloons with a huge blister on the top of one of them the size of a hen egg. Her eyes are sunk back in her head and she has been asleep since Friday at 1:00 in the afternoon. She can no longer walk and has to be in a diaper. 

She spits her food out and is refusing her medicine. Mother has decided to go home..

I am considering having her brought here, along with Hospice and home health care maybe I can do it, my son and husband think that it will be too much, my brother tells me to do what my heart says.  I will just be still and listen to my heart. 

The Dr. said it could be as long as 2 months. I refuse that in the name of Jesus. I pray that HE takes her home quickly. She is HIS beloved and HE loves her so. 

I have no other words to say to you right now.  I cannot even imagine the days to come. I will get some sleep and go back to the hospital at 4 am or so and I will be there with her and with her when they move her and with her there till HE calls her name. 

I will be back when I can, I will post when she crosses over Jordan.

Pray that the Father God call her name soon..........  She has an adoring husband waiting just over the river and he has been standing there just  70 days. 

If Not For HIS Word

Well I went out without my camera. Bummer!!!!!!!   Night out with my brother PE and Alpha and son Chris and sweet husband. Today was PE's birthday.  Happy Birthday PE.  I took him out to dinner at a very nice Italian restaurant  here in town called Papa Giorgio's,  nice place with GREAT food.  We had a good time but I hate hate hate that I forgot my camera.   

We are getting some much needed rain tonight and the temp outside is a wonderful 72 degrees.  

Now about Mom. I called her tonight and I should not have done that. She is not the same and sounds very drugged up. Her voice is different and I had to keep telling her who I was.  She has stopped walking now and is in a wheel chair and she was walking when she went in. 

They said her thyroid is all messed up and now she has a UTI and she is on antibiotics.  I talked to her for just a minute and asked how she was doing and were they treating her ok, she said not so good and I just want to go home.  I thought that my heart would break.

I have been searching my mind for the promises of God more and more each day and reading out loud those that I find to cover my mom.  I know that the Father God is right there with her and HE cares for her much more than I do, but right now it does not feel that way.  

 

I have read the scripture in Isaiah 54:4

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

We are not able to carry the sorrow of this world and the griefs that come upon us. I often before today wondered why that paticaluar scripture was there. HE carried the sin of the world upon HIM and saved us from an eternal hell but HE also carried the sorrow and grief that HE knew we would face.  

HE loves us and cares for us and knows that the weight of this world will crush us if not for the price HE paid. 

HE bought for us eternal life but HE also bore the grief of the entire human race so that we might not grieve. What would life have been without that price that HE paid. The grief and sorrow alone would destroy us. 

HE PAID IT ALL..  ALL TO HIM I OWE.

Just Like That- They Are Both Gone........

Mom is gone. She was admitted to a Psychiatric Hospital on Thursday September 2nd at 5:30 PM. I am broken, but it was a miracle.

Mother has digressed in the past two months to the point that even the home health workers were amazed. We tried everything. We brought her here to live with us (right next door) we fixed up her a little room with everything from her house to make her feel at home. She just got a little worse and little worse. She began to moan more and more and it became constant. She would just sit and say Oh God I want to go home, please let me go home. 

So after 6 weeks of that and not knowing what to do , we decided to let her go home. We moved everything back and fixed up her little house and installed cameras and baby monitors and took off the bathroom door in case she fell and we could not get to her. The camera was mounted in the corner of the living room and I could monitor it from my lap top at home. I could see her in her living room/kitchen and in her bedroom. The camera would turn just enough to see the entrance to the bathroom in order for her to have her privacy. I could here everything in the house thus she was safe.

We did that the 22nd of August. We thought she would be so happy, she was at home. That night I went over there to help her get ready for bed and tuck her in, after coming back home and sitting at my laptop I heard her praying. "Oh God please just let me go home". My heart was broken.. I cried myself to sleep. 

We continued to let her stay there hoping it would just take a bit of time but as time passed and she began to realize that she was alone and begging me to stay with her. I tried to explain that I could not live out there and  then began the wailing and wanting to go home and wanting not to be out there alone. So, I began to bring her over here at night. Let her sleep here and then spend her days in her home. Nothing worked. Nothing. 

This past Saturday mother had some sort of breakdown.  Her anxiety became very elevated and the wailing became much worse. She quit eating and went to bed. She was just digressing before my eyes.  Sunday was the same and then Monday the home health came in and they just had no answers for me. My brother  PE came over to see if just a change of face would help and it actually got a bit worse. By Tuesday morning she was still the same and now a bit more anxious so I took her to the ER.  After many many tests and CT scan on her head and IV and 3 Demerol shots in 5 hours mom did not calm down.

The ER doctor was very very kind and told me it was the dementia and explained to me that it will turn on a dime. I brought her home and she slept most of the afternoon. Wednesday morning, she was the same and at this point I knew that I could no longer keep my mom. I sat out on her pretty little deck all day Wednesday and just listened to her and cried. I could no longer reach my mom. 

Wednesday night I went over to mom's about 8:00 to bring her home with us for the night and by the time we got her to the back door she was out of control. I really thought I would need to call 911 and they would have to give her something to knock her out. She was wailing and slinging her feet and legs and arms and screaming to go home.  I finally got her calmed down enough to get her in bed, and she slept all night. 

Now--- The miracle that broke my heart........

Great grief, brings prayer from the heart that the mind cannot comprehend . I remember that I fell asleep praying in my prayer language Wednesday night talking to my Father God. Great grief gripped my soul.

Thursday morning she was still the same and it was then that I placed the call to my brother. I have always told him that when I can no longer care for Mom I would let him know and he had promised that he would take care of everything at that point. I made the call. I cried and cried ...

There is a wonderful Nursing home about 30 minutes from me that we have looked at a couple of times. It is clean and well kept and the people are wonderful.  He spent about two hours with the RN head of nursing and she was very very helpful and told us that of course mom would have a  place to live. She then told him about a  place right here in town where mother first needed to go.

They take them (Alzheimer's/Dementia patients ) and take them off all their medicine and clear their system and get them on medicine that will control their symptoms and give them quality of life. She explained to PE that if Mom got down there and they could not calm her down they would send her right back to this facility.
One phone call by me at 3:00 and explained what was going on and my brother Paul hurrying to town as he has Power of Attorney for mom and by 6:00 she was admitted to this wonderful place in the capable hands of a Dr that is a specialist in Geriatric care and grief counseling for those with Dementia/Alzheimer's
.

She will be there 7-14 days and get her off all medicine and then back on just the right medicine to get her back to be able to enjoy life and then she  will go from there to the Nursing Home in the near town.
Please pray for mom.  She needs a touch from the masters hand. 

Just like that.....  There were two and now there are none. Just like that Mom was gone from my home and I would never again tuck her into bed at night and kiss her cheek before she went to sleep. Just like that I did not need to try to get her to eat or take her medicine. Just like that she was gone.

Had I known that the night before would be her last here with me, I might had let her stay up longer or maybe I would have kissed her twice. Just like that just 60 days ago I had both my mom and Dad and now they are gone. I broke just minutes after leaving the facility, and I broke bad.

You see I have been taking care of Mom and Dad for over 8 years now. The first 4 was just kind of maintenance with Dr appointments and grocery shopping and necessary things for their comfort. The last 4 years was just about 24/7 and the last year was just constant care and just like that they are both gone.

It is now Saturday and my grief is no better.  Mom has called my brother three time begging to go home, but when he asks her where home is she just wails and says she does not know.  My heart is broken and I so covet your prayers for my mom. She needs for the Lord to touch her and give her peace.  

I believe that this is all from the Father God and HE provided a way for mom to get help and a way for me to not have to grieve anymore over not being able to reach her. HE promises that HE will provide a way of escape for us when things become unbearable and my care giving to my mom had become just that. The last two day she was here all I did was sob. Cannot live like that. She could not live like that. I was begging and begging the Father God to fix it, and fix it HE did.

I am eternally grateful that HE is providing for my mom and that HE loves her more than I do. I am grateful that when we do not understand HIS ways HE is still in control. I am grateful for the years that I have had out here with my mom and dad. I am grateful that HE trusted me enough to put them in my hands. I am thankful that no matter what happens from this day forward there is a day coming that we three, me and my mom and my dad will embrace and then walk the streets of heaven and have no more memory of pain and sadness.

We will just love and laugh.

Please please just pray for mom. She is suffering.