God Gave Us a Chance

Audrey (8) came downstairs crying tonight and told me she misses Mommy. She said she just wanted to hold her hand and hug her and for her to be here and well again. It surprises me how infrequently this has happened since So Young died. The kids really don’t sit and cry a lot about So Young being gone.

Later Audrey said, “I remember I held her hand. God gave us a chance. I had no idea.”

Audrey was talking about the night So Young died. We were pretty sure that she was going to go very, very soon, maybe in a couple of days or a week, so that night we made a special effort to have the girls say “good night” to their mother while she slept — unresponsive — on the bed. Shannon sat next to Audrey on the bed while Audrey wordlessly held her mom’s beautiful left hand, which So Young hadn’t moved in several days. I didn’t tell Audrey that her mom was going to die. I had told the older two, but I just couldn’t bring myself to crush an 8-year-old like that, only to crush her again by telling her after her mom had passed. So like she said, she had no idea. That was Audrey’s last moment with her mom.

Audrey brought home a graded writing assignment the other day. She got an S+ on it, which is the best grade you can get. The teacher had filled in a title for her: “An Interesting Story.”

“Would you like to hear an interesting story? On day my mom had a bran tomer and I held her hand. When I woke up I was waiting for someone to wake me up. Then my dad came in. Mom went to heven last night. He said as a tear droped down his eye. I have lots of memorys about mommy!”

That pretty well summarizes what it was like to tell her. Audrey was the last I told and the one I least wanted to tell. But God gave her that one last chance.