Today is a day of remembrance, despite the turmoil and devastation all around us, even out our windows into what was our yard and in the house, where carpets have been ripped up and mildew and mold have taken reign.
This is a day of remembrance despite my deep fatigue at being on the road yesterday for 12 1/2 hours, fighting oceans of people across the entire span of Interstate 10 in southern Louisiana and arriving home in the pitch black. I could not even recognize our neighborhood or corner to turn to our house because all I could see through my brightened headlights were piles and piles of trees everywhere, six to eight feet high, with many more trees hanging in half above and all around.
I thought I knew how things were "down here" and was prepared and braced to come home. But, when I saw it for myself I was totally shocked. I sat in the car half in the street and half in the driveway looking at the giant crater where once a large hardwood had stood outside my window. It is still there, but has been completely uprooted, sod and all, with the trunk leaning over at a precarious angle about six feet off the ground.
Dear friends from church cut all of our downed trees into big sections, leaves, needles and all, and they line the entire street on that side of the house some six feet high.
I have now discovered there is no way to prepare for such losses as those that occurred here.
A much worse, unassuaged loss happened three years ago today, when on an early hot and humid September Saturday morning, well before the sun rose, Tom’s beautiful younger daughter, Kim, suddenly and without warning, quickly bled to death within 20 minutes in her bedroom in her home in Brandon, Mississippi from an aortic aneurysm while her husband and paramedics tried in vain to save her life.
It was not only her life that ended. So did big chunks of our hearts, that went with her on her journey from this earth to the next, where such things as ruptured aortas do not happen, nor does life end.
She was very tall (5′ 10") like her dad, with long legs and dark hair and eyes, and looked like a feminine version of him, too. They were very close and Tom’s loss has been incomprehensible and unending.
He considers the best thing left of her to be Hayley, her little daughter who was only four when her mother died. She looks much like Kim and brings Tom great joy, but sadness, too, that she will never really know her mother and that Kim will not be the mother she needs.
Kim was a good mother. And daughter. And sister. And friend. And, most of all, good Christian. She is with God.
But, we miss her still and will spend today thinking especially of her and her good life and all she brought to all of us for such a short time on this earth. May we all live as she did so that we, too, will be ready when we die.
Dee Andrews
Thanks for sharing that Dee. Glad your back home. Matt Elliot blogged today about the value of something old being restored. May your house be that way.
Still praying for you.
I am glad you have arrived safely. Many answered prayers. As you say these things can be rebuilt.
I have grappled this week with the selfishness of wanting someone back who was taken too soon. Kim is in a much better place and waits lovingly for you all to be with her. Too me there is no greater comfort.
My prayers continue for you and yours.
Dee, we’re so thankful that you made OK. Today is a day of memory but also of grief. God bless you and your family as you work through all of this.
God’s blessings be yours.
Sounds like Kim was not only living life, ready to die and be with God, but living life with God right here. People like that are the ones we miss the most.
Dee,
I am so sorry for your losses. I thought of a Rich Mullens song where he sings, “Hold me Jesus, I’m shaking like a leaf.”
This is my prayer for you today.
May God gather Kim into His house and comfort you in your grief.
Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles » Blog Archive » Journey to the Far Shore // Sep 17, 2006 at 7:19 pm
[...] September 17th, 2006 at 7:19 pm by Dee O’Neil Andrews Not to be morbid here in any way, but if any of you are still around when this shell of a physical body I live in goes back to the earth from whence it came – dust to dust, ashes to ashes – and my soul t akes flight, remember these words of mine today. I write here my epitaph as I see death at this time in my life’s journey.This has been a week of memories. Memories of 9/11 last Monday for us all; for us personally, memorie much more compelling. Thursday was the fourth sad annual reminder of Tom’s beloved daughter Kim’s death. I will not write of her now, but refer you to what I wrote last September 14, and I hope you will read it. See her picture with Tom and her little daughter, Hayley – In Memoriam – Kimberly Andrews Oldham.I also remember my dad’s death 10 years this date. Here I offer you a special Wind Vane story from last September 30th, which tells his story and mine on his last complete, "perfect" day on earth. Take the time to read about "A Perfect Day – September 15, 1996" and comment either there or here, your choice.I wrote the other day in response to Mike Cope’s Wednesday post he called "The Last Minute Phone Call," about how I view death these days and why I always say "I love you" to Tom, my kids, my family, whenever we must say good-bye, even if for a short time.I’ve come to think of death as sailing off on our brightly colored Hobie catamaran toward the setting of the sun where the lighthouse on the not too distant shore gleams brightly ahead shining its glowing light across the water showing us the path to home. Across the waves I hear all the echoes of the many loving words shared and left between us and they, too, help guide the way.I close with a poem I wrote many years ago as a very young woman long before I ever had the chance to sail. It was not written as such, but could today serve as my epitaph or eulogy complete. I leave it with you to remember me by when – not if – my final earth day shall come when I set sail to eternal shores. THE LIGHTHOUSE Across the blue calm seaI see a safe place for me.Light, flashing brightOn wings of gullsReflects the silverOf the wavesThat beat a shining pathTo the shore.The door is thereBelow the stairThat upward leadsTo the lighthouseOf my soul. Dee Ann Andrews circa 1973 [...]
Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles » Blog Archive » Reflections & Remembrances Intertwined: A Lovely Girl; A Beloved Father // Sep 17, 2009 at 11:09 am
[...] posts w/photos here (2005), here (2006 – this is more a meditation on life and death, w/links to some other posts about [...]