It's July 1st. This is the anniversary of my mother's passing away from cancer. By the time it was discovered, it had become lung cancer, breast cancer, and brain cancer. Nobody ever knew for sure where it had started. I was 28 at the time. I was a working professional, but still living in my parents' home. My mom and dad were still my life, besides a few work and college friends. I had no marriage prospects at the time.

I remember clearly one day when it was obvious to me that mom was slipping away before our eyes. She was home at the time, all set up in the family room in a rented hospital bed. Her personality had already been drastically altered by the brain symptoms, so in that way she had already changed. But we were seeing other irreversible changes that really hit home one evening as I was sitting in my room. She would be really leaving us ... soon. An Amy Grant song was playing on my portable CD player, and as I listened to the words, it seemed almost surreal to me.

In many ways I felt like my life had just barely gotten started. I had marriage and family, yet, to look forward to. But it would all happen WITHOUT my mom. Could I visualize 17 years without her? Ten years? Five years? Heck, I hadn't ever gone a week without at least speaking to her by phone. It was all so inconceivable.

Somehow, the Lord gives us the grace to do it. The loss of my mom has changed me in immeasurable ways. Profound ways. I began to rediscover my dad, and become better friends with him. Everything up until then had been so "mom centered". (She really had been the hub of the family.) Dad retired shortly after my mom passed, and then we found ways to have fun with him, going on trips together and parties and things that we had never done before with Dad. So that was a good thing.

I began to make decisions -- big decisions -- more on my own. And within a few short years, I had met, and married, my dh, and began a new life in the South, in a different state, far from home. And the rest is my life's ongoing history.

And the Amy Grant song that was playing on my CD player that June evening so long ago can still be heard on the radio from time to time. It goes like this:

I WILL REMEMBER YOU (Amy Grant/ Gary Chapman/ Keith Thomas)

I will be walking one day
Down a street far away
And see a face in the crowd and smile
Knowing how you made me laugh
Seeing sweet echoes of you from the past
I will remember you

Look in my eyes while you're near
Tell me what's happening here
See that I don't want to say ... goodbye
Our love is frozen in time
I'll be your champion and you will be mine
I will remember you

Later on ... when this fire is an ember
Later on ... when the night's not so tender
Given time ... though it's hard to remember
I will be holding
I'll still be holding to you

I will remember you

So many years come and gone
And yet the memory is strong
One word we never could learn ... goodbye
True love is frozen in time
I'll be your champion and you will be mine
I will remember
So please remember
I will remember you.






This is Mom and Dad at their 40th wedding anniversary party, May, 1988. That was a great day!