There is a strange, yet God given peace in our home today.
I loved and respected my Mother in Law.
She developed dementia over the last four or five years.
This very fine Lady never lost her innate dignity, or her gentle and loving nature.
Her smile lit up when we arrived each day, and although she couldn't remember anything else, she knew she loved us, and told us so many times because she just forgot she said it.
She forgot that we had just visited, and then asked when we were coming.
She was always expecting us though.
One day, out of the blue, she decided.
She decided to go and join her Lord Jesus, and go to meet her Husband.
She decided not to eat or drink. We could not coax her.
We tried distracting her, and slipping in a few spoonfuls of juice, or soup. But she realised.
She kept her mouth firmly closed anytime we tried. Resolute and determined.
Too frail to be taken to Hospital, and the shock would have been awful to be disturbed.
My dear Mother in Law, whom I love very much, slipped away from us with poise and dignity in a frail old and weak body. We were with her as her breath left her.
Her slight and frail remains have been honoured in traditional Christian Burial.
Her wonderful spirit, her calm and graceful loving nature, her courage, and all the things I love so deeply of her, are both at one with God in her eternal home, and indelably written on the joy in my heart of having this wonderful woman and friend as my Mother in Law.
She has shown me the way to live by her example, and now she has shown me the way to die without fear or turning back.
When it is my time, I will not be afraid to walk through the valley of the shadow of death either.