This past February we lost our Mother of 75, I am thankful I was able to be there when she passed into God's hands. Not many are able to do this with their children standing beside them in those last few moments when God opens His hands to bring them home. My Mother was blessed with these moments with her children with her at her side to help her through. She was a mother of 10 and we all were there in heart and spirit. Not all could be with her at her last moments, which is so totally understandable, with that there were 9 of us and her sister with her to the moment she passed from our hands to God’s Hands.
When a parent passes away for someone else you feel for those people, still you don't get the full impact of what that causes in every aspect in which it hits a child. When there is more than one child, it affects each one; it is how each deal that shows the difference. I am amazed with the fact there are 10 of us and that none of us were truly worried about what “we would get from her” it was how do we take care of her and how we manage with what she left behind. My Mom had a business of her own that she worked at for over 25 years, which also had to be resolved. One of my sisters took this on with diligence. Then the cost of funeral expenses, because we didn’t know if there was insurance or anything set aside, another sister diligently took this on of her own choice. The house needed to be dealt with and two of us worked it everyday, then when others had time in between working, kids and other obligations they would also help. Considering there are 10 of us, we had some disagreements, yet settled the best we could between each personality, we made it through still all a family without anger that would last a lifetime of hate. I want to thank you Lord for giving each of us patients, kindness, and most of all Love for each other to get through the last month and half. I pray that we continue this with each other through our time here on earth.
Now with all that we went through these last weeks we learned some valuable lessons. The idea's/suggestions I have are not much still with what I went through in all of this I believe it would be of help to others.
1. If you have anything you want your children to have, maybe give them those things now when you both can share a memory. This way the reason you want them to have it gives meaning to the child.
2. Another way to handle that is put a name on those special items, so when someone is cleaning/sorting, they know your wishes and hopefully follow through for you.
3. Write a will, even if you don't have it legally done, most children will try and follow your instruction if your family is like that, if not, make it legal and binding if possible. I know there is cost for this and some of us can't afford it especially these days. Seems to be an extra expense we don't have money for, still write something down so they have a chance to be able to do as you feel.
4. If you do have insurance to cover expenses, make sure it can be found, or let someone know that you do have it so it can be found. Keep important papers in a place someone is able to find them as well.
5. Let family know some of your wishes so that when it comes to those final days, they already know your feelings and are able to do what they can to implement each.
6. Pictures, oh my goodness, if you can take pencil and write on the backs of who it is the year it was taken and possibly ages, would do a world of good. We found so much of this, my Mom was good at trying to do this, believe me it helps.
7. My mom had a calendar that was totally filled out already for 2009 with birthdays and anniversaries with the year of birth or marriage with each, for the family. This was awesome; I have taken that and written them all out for each of us to have a copy of them. Reason is because with this calendar you also have family history, for she also wrote in names and years of deceased family members of birth and death.
8. If you have a business that you are running, whether small or large, make sure that it can be taken care of by those that have to work with it. Important thing is a list of customers with current numbers would be super so that family is able to contact them. That is something we had to deal with ourselves. Most numbers were there, still had to look some up from older customers she had paper work for and hadn't had contact in years.
9. Which that brings in another point to make. If you are like in a business that requires or you choose to hold onto paperwork for your customers, don't let it build to a point that those who have to deal with it have so much. We as a family chose to burn anything that was over a certain age or year. There was paperwork from over 20 years back, yes, alot to burn. We figured that was the best way to handle such papers of importance. Burned at a home that made sure that all of it was burned for security of the people that we no longer knew, were deceased, or couldn't find.
10. When your dealing with a loss of a family member, whether a parent, brother, sister, grandparent, Aunt, Uncle, or anyone you were close to, PRAY to help you get through. I truly feel this helps in so many ways sometimes we don't realize it at first, yet looking back you can realize where that helped you along the path to fulfill what was needed to be done.
May God Bless you one and all in your destiny of life and beyond.
Smile, then the world will smile with you... it works
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