Monday's Mourning Ministry - The Permanence of Your Absence - Here Comes Goodbye ~Rascal Flatts

Monday's Mourning Ministry

The Permanence of Your Absence

Here Comes Goodbye ~Rascal Flatts

"Which had just brought on a fresh bucket of sobs, both girls going to hell then, beginning to wail and hug each other and shake, mouths wide and oval and slightly skewered in the pantomime of grief Sean had seen time and time again, the moment when...the levee broke and

the permanence of the victim's absence truly hit home.

Times like that, there was nothing you could do but watch or leave."

~Dennis LeHane, Mystic River

*****

The Permanence of Your Absence

The family's together watching a comedy routine,

In the warmth of the company, we laugh till we cry

At comedians you laughed at in the very same scene,

But you're not here with us ~ O why baby why?

Each moment together, now there's a hole:

A presence is missing, an invaluable soul.

We've cancelled Christmas gatherings, birthdays too;

Our family's not a "family" without the presence of you.

After 4 1/2 years, it's beginning to sink in,

The permanence of your absence ~ you're "gone with the wind."

You wanted to be a comedian when you grew up:

You loved to crack us up ~ we laughed till we cried

At some of your antics since you were a wee pup...

You still leave us crying, but we're dying inside:

Our hearts broke apart on the day that you died.

Each moment together, there's a gaping hole

Until we reach Heaven, we'll no longer be whole;

Each moment together, now there's a hole,

Your presence is missing, sweet invaluable soul.

But sweet baby girl, God says you're nearby

In His cloud of witnesses who watch from the sky.

Please hover over, we need you nearby,

And bear with us baby as you live ~ yet we cry...

And your presence is with us through each mournful sigh...

May God send His comfort...that you live while we die...

Each moment together, now there's a hole:

Your presence is missing, sweet invaluable soul...

*****

Rascal Flatts was one of Merry Katherine's favorite country music groups, which makes the following music even more poignant than it already would be for me. Be sure to watch this video to the very end for a sweet surprise.

Here Comes Goodbye

Rascal Flatts

Written By: Chris Sligh, Clint Lagerberg

I can hear the truck tires coming up the gravel road
And it’s not like her to drive that slow, nothings on the radio
Footsteps on the front porch, I hear my doorbell
She usually comes right in, now I can tell

Here comes goodbye, here comes the last time
Here comes the start of every sleepless night
The first of every tear I’m gonna cry
Here comes the pain, Here comes me wishing things had never changed
She was right here in my arms tonight, but here comes goodbye

I can hear her say I love you like it was yesterday
And I can see it written on her face that she had never felt this way
One day I thought I’d see her with her daddy by her side
And violins would play here comes the bride

But here comes goodbye, here comes the last time
Here comes the start of every sleepless night,
The first of every tear I’m gonna cry
Here comes the pain, Here comes me wishing things had never changed
She was right here in my arms tonight, but here comes goodbye

Why's it have to go from to good to gone?
Before the lights turn on, yeah and you’re left alone
All alone, but here comes goodbye

Oh-oh-oh-oh-ohh

Here comes goodbye, here comes the last time
Here comes the start of every sleepless night
The first of every tear I’m gonna cry
Here comes the pain, Here comes me wishing things had never changed
She was right here in my arms tonight, but here comes goodbye

Picture thanks to FotoSearch.com

Poem - The Permanence of Your Absence" - Angie Bennett Prince - 3/5/2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uq3nI11w4g&feature=related

Friday's Faith - The Child-Loss Mommy . . . Who Lost her Mommy

Me, my mother, and Merry Katherine (2003)

Friday's Faith

The Child-Loss Mommy . . . Who Lost her Mommy

Three days ago, on Tuesday, December 28, I got the dreaded call, that my precious mother had passed away. (My siblings had been trying to warn me Mother was getting weaker since the day after Christmas, but I could not bear to hear my mother was getting weaker when I was so far away from her and could do nothing to help her. I could not even answer the phone. I could not even bear to hear their messages or read my brother's text, so Tommy had to listen and read for me, then relay the general messages.) And now it is SO painful to lose the mother who has loved me every day of my life, the mother who understands child-loss like no other person in my family ever could as she lost my brother Buddy, her oldest child--her first-born son, thirty years ago when he was only 38 years old.

Flash back to four years ago. On the night of the day we discovered Merry Katherine was killed, Tommy and I each felt such a coldness in the center of our heart that neither one of us was able to sleep. Our baby girl was gone from the face of this earth? It could not be. And what did she go through on her final day? Our bodies could not rest. Our hearts viscerally felt the ice-cold reality that our minds could not fathom.

So again, three nights ago, on the night of December 28th upon going to bed after my mother had died, my heart was feeling what my mind could not conceive - that my mother, the nurturer of my entire existence, was not here? Had left the face of this earth? My body was restless and could not sleep. If I did lightly drift off, I was immediately awakened with a coldness in my heart, with a concurrent strong pining for my mother. I was feeling a combination of feelings, wrestling with what did she feel on her last day, in her last moments before leaving this world, along with feelings of desperation of how am I to live on the face of this earth without my mother, the one who had understood my heart from day one of my life?

I could not sleep. The pining was too great. A poem began going through my head. I could not sleep until I got up to get the feelings out and to write the poem that was incubating inside, trying to process this aching cry down in the core of my heart. I flashed back to the icy feelings I had when Merry Katherine died. So I decided to get up and write this angst out as best I could. I began to write...

The Child-Loss Mommy . . . Who Lost her Mommy

They all cried out, each and every one

Each and ev'ry sibling. -- I could not come!

Can they not see, I cannot lose another one!

Now I cannot sleep ~ my heart cries out:

Where is she ~ who always looks out

to care for me ~ I cannot find

her anywhere ~ where'd she go?

Can I go there? ~ Does no one know:

A child-loss mom can't lose her mommy!

I can't look up; I can't look down...

My child's not here, now my Mom's not roun'?

Dear God in Heav'n, can You hear my guttural cry?

Did You need her with You, more than I?

I know I prayed - You her soul to take

if she must go ~ hold her in Your arms to take...

But now she's gone, my heart cries out:

"I've lost my child! Where's my Mom?" I shout!

Please dear God, how much pain can I take;

And yet, sweet comfort -- in Your arms, she'd wake.

Please dear God, help Your hurting child!

Father of all Comfort, come to me.

Losing a loved one is hell on earth.

And yet, even in Heaven, You felt death's dearth.

You know this pain:

You lost Your Child when He lost His mother.

You've felt the worst pains --

Pains worse than any other.

You hear these cries of a grieving mother.

Who lost her child and now her mother.

Hold me in Your same loving arms

That rescued my mother from any more harms.

Thank You for Your love on both You've poured out

At the greatest loss to You ~

Thank You that this life's not all there is;

Your Child conquered death by giving us His.

Now we'll live with Him in eternity,

Held in Your arms and held in His.

Hold my mother ~ she is Your child --

While I pine for her ~ nurture each of us, Your child:

The mommy, the grieving mommy, and the

grieving mommy's child.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles..."

~2 Corinthians 1:3-4a NIV

Merry Katherine reading Grandmommy her Mother's Day card

with Aunt Lyn looking on

Mother's Day, 2004

My precious Mother

Mother's Day, 2004

My brother Rick and I, cutting up with Mother

Thanksgiving, 2004

Me with parents, siblings, and nephew

Left to Right, back row,

Angie, Daddy, Mother, Curt (Buddy's son)

front row, Dianne, Lyn, Don, and Rick

October, 2003

Wednesday's Woe - The Heavy Presence of Your Absence

Wednesday's Woe

The Heavy Presence of Your Absence

The emptiness from your absence fills the vapid room;

The Great Void o’ertakes silence like the sonic boom...

Though no one speaks it, your absence brings such gloom;

Yes, your spirit’s in Heaven, though your body’s in the tomb…

How do we celebrate Christmas...when our baby’s left our “womb”?

The Heavy Presence of Your Absence sucks air from the room,

Sapping life-giving air from each person in the room,

Filling hearts with dread, sealing each of us with doom.

The heavy presence of your absence within our room does loom…

And yet the spirit of your presence fills the air like sweet perfume

So despite death’s cold of snow, out peeks the spring thaw’s bloom…

Poem - The Great Void Sucks the Air from the Empty Room - Angie Bennett Prince – 11/21/09

Monday's Mourning Ministry - Amazing Grace, My Chains Are Gone!

Monday's Mourning Ministry

Amazing Grace, My Chains Are Gone!

My son Nathan called me one day from Lee University where he is in graduate school. He wanted me to listen to the song below as he felt it applied so well to Merry Katherine. I wept when I heard it knowing that indeed, today she is singing,

"Amazing grace, my chains are gone!"

Amazing Grace, My Chains are Gone

by Chris Tomlin

Searching the Bible on Behalf of us Bereaved Parents

as we Grieve Our Great Loss…

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you,

who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,

^{for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.}

1 Peter 1:3-9 NIV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyFxArMeRDI