This is a hard post to write.  Any post about death is hard, but since most of my family has died, it’s pretty hard for me to write about another one.

My first cousin Cathy passed away in the night, after-effects of a hip replacement surgery she had last week. 

Cathy and her husband Loren raised my older brother Mike.  He was with them, helping Loren’s dad move, just hours before Mike died of a brain aneurysm in 1997.  They were his family, and their daughters were special to him.

Did I mention that Cathy named her CAT after me?  And that cat lived a long and happy life, even though it had my name.  I’ve had a niece named after me, but not a cat before!

Cathy has been working on me for over a year, trying to pull me into the family loop.  I’ve been resistant, to say the least, and if you knew about my family’s history, you’d probably understand why.  Although Cathy said I was her favorite when I was little, her dad hated me because I looked like my mother – so, I became the “throw-away” child when our dad died and our mom abandoned us.  No one wanted me.  That left a very long life of bitterness on my end, as I traveled from one foster home to another … knowing that I wasn’t wanted by my own family.  Well, I wasn’t wanted by my dad’s side of the family.  Luckily, my uncle on my mom’s side took me in and finished raising me.  Grateful doesn’t begin to explain how I feel about them, but they took a chance and I think I turned out ok – and I give them all the credit for that.

Because God is my Father and Jesus is my Savior – I know that Cathy is on her way to everlasting life, and she believed the same.  I know she’s exactly where she should be, according to His plan – and hopefully she’s giving my brother a big ole’ heavenly hug right now for the both of us.  But, I also know that her mother, husband, daughters, grandchildren, nieces, etc. are suffering from their loss.  I hope it’s acceptable for me to join that group, without offending anyone, and say that I’m suffering a bit, too. 

Before Christmas, Cathy sent me family photos from days gone by.  Lots of photos of my dad’s side of the family, as well as a number of my brothers as they were growing up.  She took hours going through photos and copying them for me, because she knew that I had little or nothing by way of tangible memories of our family. 

She cared about me, even though it took me many years to accept that.  I’m a tough bird to crack, but she was slowly peeling away the layers of my bitterness to show me that even if I felt I wasn’t part of that side of the family, she believed I was.  At least part of her family.  And I was starting to believe that. 

Now, I can only try to find joy in the knowledge that God has plans for her in heaven, better plans than what she thought He had planned for her to do on earth. 

Cathy – thank you for trying to help me find good in people that I always saw as bad.  Thank you for trying to help me see that I had a place in the family, even if I resisted.  Thank you for sharing yourself with me.  And thank you for loving me.  God’s Peace to you as you make your way Home.

My kids wanted to go trick-or-treating.  We usually hit some friends’ homes, the local church’s trunk-or-treat and then a few houses along the path home.   This year, there weren’t many lights on, on main street, so I took them on the side roads of the big city of Medina – population around 200.  They were a little leery of going up to houses and knocking on the doors of strangers, since that’s not something they would normally do…so, it took a few houses for them to get comfy (and cocky) about the whole process.

As we drove around, there was one house that didn’t have a porch light on, but did have strings of orange lights all around their carport.  It was in the middle of a street, and just happened to be the last house we stopped at. 

GOOD thing, too!

A man, dressed in prison garb, came walking to the edge of his carport when the kids came up.  They politely said TRICK-OR-TREAT and he started handing them candy.

Then he started talking “Halloween Trash” to them – we could hear him from the car, and the kids were laughing and joking with him.  Then, he told them they needed to be careful on such a scary night, that he heard a man with a chainsaw was loose in the neighborhood.

They laughed and joked about it.

Then, all of a sudden, a man came out of the bushes and revved up his chainsaw.  You have never seen four kids jump completely off the ground and move 10 feet without their feet ever touching the ground in your life!  JD and I were watching all of this unfold, and we showed our “bad parent” side by bursting out laughing.

When DD#2 came to the car, she said all she could think of was to grab onto her brother and save him – when in reality, what she did was to grab him and put herself behind him – basically so she could be spared!  I asked her how it felt to SAVE her BROTHER and she laughed, said it wasn’t something she thought of.

DD#3 walked very slowly to the car, tears streaming down her face.  Poor thing!  Of course, JD and I couldn’t stop laughing, so once she got in the car, she realized it was a scary halloween trick, and she then proclaimed (a half-dozen times) that he scared the BEJEEBERS out of her!

Lucky for them, they have no clue about the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and neither do I (nor do I want to!). 

It gave us all a good laugh – and we’ll just have to see if they beg to go to THAT house again next year!