Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end. matchbox 20 closing time

    It came to an end today. My Aunt Emma Jean passed away at 4:45p.m. Tuesday July 18,2006.  I was the last person she saw in her life.  I wish it were not so, that she had to go. But Ialso feel at peace for her. She hurts no more. She crys no more. She is bewildered no more. For she was no more Emma Jean here on this earth. She was not the woman I remember when I was small who washed my hair with rain water, to make it shine and feel soft.  She was not the  lady who made things happen if she desired them to. She was no longer anyone she liked to be. She was a stranger to herself and to us, her family. She is now Emma Jean once more in the presence, in the very room with all of God's Glory shining around and down upon her bent head and she kneels before God to receive His gift of eternal life. I feel at peace for her soul. The golden light in the photo I have as my heading for this, her last blog, is the sort of healing warmth,I feel she is surrounded with.  I took this photo as I was going home from caring for her one day.Ithad started to thunderstorm just as the sun was setting. The world was filled with golden rain for a while. I stood in that golden shower,and took this photo.

She wished to be cremated and they are going to make the arrangements tomorrow. She requested to be placed in the cemetary with all of her brothers and sister( my momma) in the appropriate type grave and a marker erected for her. It will be done as she desired. I do not wish to attend these arrangements, but I have a lot of experience at it,and well if Al asks I will go.

This morning I went as usual to Al's house to take over care duty and Al told me she had slept all night without waking. He got up several times to check her and she was sleeping soundly.  I figured she was glad to have gotten all of her business taken care of last night, and had finally relaxed. I did not wake her until 9:00a.m., well I tried with ice water and a cloth to wake her and wet her mouth, but she would not wake up. I did not feel I should call 911, at that time. She was sleeping deeply and had a percosett before bed as well as a lunesta. She should have been asleep.  I called Al instead. He elected to come home and try to wake her himself. He tried and she roused enough to shake her head and mouth the words no, no, no, no more. He asked if she was sure and she shook her head yes. I washed her face and hands, I tucked her covers around her and I let her sleep.

Al and I talked about all of her wishes, she had begged both of us to not let her die in a hospital or nursing home. She was at the time to do one or the other of these things, as Al's finacee was not going to be able to care for her alone even with my part time help. She was lying in a sort of U shape and she was not able to bend out of it. I felt so helpless, I just kept wetting her lips and hand combing her hair. Al said he needed a few things from the store and I volunteered to go, and let him have some alone time with her. I was gone for about 3 hours, returned at around 2:30p.m. She was breathing more shallowly, but still steady. I wet her face and lips, tried to get her to take a drop or two of water from my fingertips, no avail, and left her room around 3:30p.m. I talked to Al for a while and he was calling her granddaughter for the 15th time since this morning, I went back in to check on her. It was around 4:30p.m. and she woke up when I placed the washcloth to her mouth, and shook her head at me no. I asked wasn't she thirsty, she shook her head no once again, I told her that her granddaughter was on the way and she got really agitated , shaking her head and moving it from side to side saying no, no, with her lips. I calmed her by telling her she did not have to do anything she did not want to do. I went out to get Al and tell him she was awake . We needed to get some liquids into her and call 911. If she was lucid and could recognize me, she was not going to go today. We could still help her maybe, but when we went back in at 5:10 p.m. she was gone. Gone.........gone.......

Coroners and Ems vehicles and the funeral home all made the parade today and it is over for the physical pains, and mental suffering she so bravely withstood to make everything right for her family. She was one of the bravest women ever to be born. I am envious of her place to which she sees all of our family waiting for her. Today marks the end of Emma Jeans beginning. And the new beginning from that ending. Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.

lockerridge

July15,2006------Passion always comes with a high price to pay..............

Hello my friends,

This is a day I would rather not have in my life. I am sure that it is a day no one wishes for themselves ever. I was asked to help someone I love to gain release from pain, permanently. I could not do it. I am torn up inside and can't patch myself back together it seems.  What does a person do when they are asked to help someone pass on? When they love the person and have watched them everyday struggle to live, and it gets no better, only worse. The pain they are feeling is so intense they pass out at times. There is no cure, there is no hope for anything in the future except pain and loss of personal pride. The help they ask for is readily available to you to give to them, in the form of legally prescribed powerful pain medication. I am a coward I fear. I could not live with that on my list of "did I do the right thing?" questions for God when I see Him. I fear it would be wrong, but is what she is suffering right? It must be for He has not called her to Him yet. Tests such as these are cruel to ones mind and heart, and the scars last forever.

I have noticed in the last 10 years of my life, that God will give you what you hate most to deal with before you die. Whatever you are in your lifetime, He will take it from you, to spend your last days as naked as you came into the world. If you are independent and self-centered, you will be given the humbling to become totally dependent on others and you must think about others to be in this condition. You think of all of the people in the past you could have helped, should have helped, but didn't. You will be faced with having all the decisions of how you will live your life and spend your money given to someone else. You will be completely dependent on others. You will have to accept what you hate the most as being what you are now.

If you are dependent and timid, you will have what you are leaning upon and hiding behind taken away and you will have to stand on your own in front of a crowd. You will be forced to be the total opposite of what you have been all of your life. This is God's way of showing you who He is and what He can do. In short He shows you He is in control, He is God, not you.

I have had my faith tested and stretched out so far it has cracked and torn, but I always have managed to tape up the cracks and glue it back together when it gets torn. I know who God is and I sure will never forget it. I just wish I could stop being taught so many lessons. I am too dumb to breathe, I think sometimes. Too many I's in this blog. Need to get to some of the How are you, part of it me thinks. (no I)

But since I have had no time to be here in a while, there is nothing much to report except, my aunt is a lot worse, as you may have guessed. She is on Percosett's now and they are making the pain easier, but not gone. I can only guess at what it would be like if her circulation were to suddenly return and all of the wounds she has were to regain all nerve feelings. It would be so bad she could not even scream. As it is she turned white and passed out the other day when she stood up to be helped into her chair, from her bed. 1 step away. I caught her, but I will never forget it, ever.

This sclerderma disease is the most cruel illness I have ever witnessed before. Cancer is mild compared to it. I have watched her turn into a hard plastic like person. Her skin has many lesions where the collagen has collected into a open place beneath the skin and the skin tightened on it and it just splits open like, well, a watermelon.   If she happens to tap herself just a little bit she does not bruise as  you and I know it. She just get a red place and that turns into a hard knot that opens and looks a lot like an eyeball, in its socket. And it does not get well. Nothing does. It just gets bigger and more sore. I would to God, He had never let this happen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She has probably in one weeks time eaten enough to fill one dinner plate with food. She takes 23 pills a day, and that does not include the salves and cremes to be rubbed onto the skin and her wounds. I am the caretaker during the day and she is not  a good patient. She has gotten meaner than a snake the last few days and has taken to chewing me out for any and everything that is wrong. I have had no time for myself at all in a long time, and I am sorry to say, I am resentful of it. She is more demanding and I am worn out. Her son is worn out. We are all about to lose our minds, but she is still with us and I will continue to keep her out of nursing facility as lon as possible. We have a program here for home health workers to come out periodically as well as hospice, which starts next week. Maybe I will get some relief then. And so will she.

Gotta go and do something else or I will never sleep tonight, take care of yourselves my friends, have the time of your life every single day, and if you are wanting to do something, and keep putting it off till a better time of money or free time. Stop and go do it now. Tomorrow may not allow you this curtesty, of manipulating your life.

lockerridge.