Memories we hold dear ......

     And suddenly ...... This was the home I spent some of my growing up years in ..... This is the home my 81 year old Mom has spent almost 50 years in. Yesterday April 6th 2014 as my daughter was working an event at the local fire station a call came in that my mother's home was "fully engulfed"  .....

      This is the picture of what my daughter's father took as he was there before the fire trucks arrived. He only lives a short distance from my mother and was able to be there in minutes after he received the call. ........ My Mom's place was built possibly pre-civil war era we had been told it was very old. It was
a 10 room farm house where the center of living was the large 15 x 22 kitchen that held our big family, friends and extended family that seemed to be there every Sunday for one of my Mom's delicious home cooked Sunday dinners. It is where family and friends fellowshipped around a huge old wooden table that was able to seat 12 comfortably, not just on Sunday's but anytime you stopped by to see "Mom" or "Aunt Naomi" as some called her.
    This house was full of memories. This is where my siblings, kids & grandkids and my kids & grandkids, explored and spent time at grandma's house. We have all been blessed over the years to have been allowed to bring home treasures and memento's from here. Mom always felt she rather we have things before she died then to wait ....... Today there are many grateful children, grandchildren & great grandchildren who possess a piece of memory from this place in our hearts.
   
   As I sit 750 miles away absorbing the shock still of this event that suddenly rocked our world and adjusting to this SUDDENLY that just happened, I have spent a lot of time over the past 24 hours thinking on all the memories. I think when a fire happens like this your memories turn to material things, family photo's on the wall, kinck knacks from all of us that was treasured, the large piano that graced Mom's livingroom, memories of standing around the piano and singing hymns and gospel songs. The touch lamp I gave Mom years ago and fasinated my kids as well as my neices and nephews. My son making sandwiches at mom's table out of what ever his heart desired in Grandma's kitchen .... I believe one consisted of peanut butter , black olives and who knows what else ..... I was offered a bit and declined by my then small son (who now stands 6'4" and still likes "weird food") who insisted it was really good. Visiting with my bedridden stepfather whose sense of humor remained despite being bedridden with  Multiple Sclerosis, who passed from this life into the eternity at the age of 75 in 1996 surrounded by a loving family.

     I am so thankful that I have taken many pictures of many memories over years inside and outside of the house .... Memories .......

     We all have them ..... each of us pieces of the past imbedded in our brains like puzzle pieces. Each of us bearing different perspectives and views of our lives as it unfolded inside and outside the man made walls that held so many treasures from times past, now gone. Yet ... as I sit here I think about the blessings that were there yesterday .... God prompted my Mom to leave for my nephew's wedding earlier then she intended ..... if she had left later she possibly would have been a casuality of the fire. We all know our Mom would have tried to salvage stuff from the house if she'd been there and possibly could have lost her life doing so. She was headed to a wedding where she was surrounded by many loving family to help support her during this tragic time. At 81 she was coming to a place in her life where she needed to make some decisions to "move somewhere easier" to live. Mom had only one source of heat and it was a old old stove in the basement of the house.She accessed this from a ladder into the cellar. In the winter she made many trips during the night up and down this ladder tending to this wood stove all alone in this big old house. There was the wood that was delivered by tractor trailer load in the summer and fall months that she had to transport into the cellar by a wheel burrow then tossed through an opened window in the basement and stack inside the cellar to be kept dry. Then there was her stuff, the house was filled literally with much stuff, 50 years of "keepings" as her kids, we were not sure what or who was going to help Mom with the task of "moving" ...... The decision is now over and made. All of us, my siblings,  neices , nephews and myself deeply believe God did not cause the fire but graciously through this sad turn of events blessed us and kept our precious Mom & grandma safe, and the event it's self has closed a door for us that will open a better door for our Mom to be able to move on.