I'LL BE WATCHING!

Today, I go the the Memorial Service being held for my uncle who passed away three days ago. He was 82 years old, and the last of my mother's family. The last connection of my childhood, with those who loved my mother and whom my mother loved.

My uncle had not led an exemplary life, and was pretty much known as a wild man, not held by any boundries but those of great pain and sorrow at the loss of his first wife and 12 year old son in a car accident forty three years ago. He drowned himself in a sea of alcohol and sorrow and rage seemly beyond his control. Yet you loved him. And through the veil of pain, you knew he loved you.

He finally remarried to a woman who already had six children and they had two of their own. From my observation window, life was still chaos, but in some ways, all the children seemed to draw down some of the self-destructive behaviors. And life went on like this for the next 35 years or so.

About eight to ten years ago, things started to change with him. His family, raised in chaos, his marriage always in chaos, was still the same, but he began to change. I have witnessed the bitterness in the family toward him, the wife, the children often rude in speaking to him. Critical of him when he would try to visit with family or friends, because this was the way they had always lived and though he was changing they could not see if for all the hurt and damage they had suffered.

As the change began to manifest, he would frequently call my mother, asking for prayer for some friend or someone he knew or had heard about that was sick or having some kind of trouble. He would ask Mom to pray and ask her to call me and ask me to pray. This went on for a number of years before my mother passed away in 2006, and then for a while, he was silent, broken once again by the loss of my mother, and then....he began to call me for prayer.

On the phone, he could have a conversation without the wife or one of the adult children, interupting or contradicting whatever he was saying. The phone was his safe place to share his heart.

His wife passed away two years ago, and because of his own health, he has been pretty much confined to the home where he and his wife had lived with their youngest son for the last 25 years. The son has never married and has supported his parents since he became old enough to work. But even living with this son, my uncle has been pretty much alone.

He loved my grand daughters, and when the grand daughter who is in the Army was home on leave, we would go to see him. He was crazy about her and her sister. In January he sent the grand daughter, who is now in Afghanistan, a quilt that he had made and some other items to bless her with and then he got a call from her that blessed him beyond expressing.

He had called me about a month ago and was wanting to ship her some miniture bananas but could not get any of his adult children who live near him to take them to the post offiice and because I do not live in the same city, I was not available to help with little things like that for him. He was always pleasant when he called me and we always had a nice visit.

My last conversation with him was two weeks ago when he called to tell me he had to eat the bananas but his plan was to get some more when his daughter came to visit from Wyoming, because she would ship them. She is his oldest daughter, from his first marriage, who was injured in the fatal accident that killed her mother and brother. She was 15 when she lost her mom and brother and she lost her father at the same time because his grief was too much to bear. She had to be placed with elderly grand parents who did the best the could to fill the gap. And she is today, an awesome woman of God and has been for more than 30 years.

In that last conversation with my uncle, he was speaking of my grand daughter and saying that when she comes home in October, she better come see him.....and then he stopped. He said, "No, sis, I won't be here when she comes home." He told me he did not feel like it would be long now, before he left this earth. I asked him if he was ready to meet the Lord and he assured me that he was. I told him that would make it easier to let him go, to know that he was safe with the Lord.

His last words to me were, "Katherine Marie, you stay here as long as you can, but when you are ready to come Home, I'll be watching for you." We said our 'I love you's and ended our last conversation on this earth.

Why have I told you all of this? Because I want to encourage you never to give up on someone. God never gives up......until the tree falls and then it is over. This tree fell, prepared to meet his Savior.