Today in the chapel, I touched her frail skin and felt her slow pulse in my hand. I was rubbing lotion into her arms and I heard a faint sound. As I bent my ear close to her mouth I heard her say...
"I have prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed"
"What are you praying for Lilly?"
"That He would take my life on earth, let me come home"
her breath smelled of death and I was at lose for words...
how can I comfort someone that is this close to leaving me?
Just two months ago she was heading down the hall of the widows wing, giving up her apartment at "The Estates" to make her home her at LTC (Loving Tender Care) with her two sisters that were already here.
She was from a family of 7, six girls and one boy! I would tease with these sisters alot - I have always loved 3 girls. Three of the six girls stayed in the area of their birth, they got married, raised their children, worked, retired, played sheephead, called each other daily, and finally moved into LTC together. How could it be? 3 girls down the Widows wing, sisters for life coming to this place? They are going to have fun I say - really spice things up around here, giggling together and playing sheephead with the pro's out in the atrium, never missing a game of Bingo, loving devotions... but, starting to get more tired - sleeping alot -
and then her legs start to swell - they are the size of a tree stump, no telling where all that fluid is coming form - but, of course it is from her heart. They call it congestive heart failure. The fluid doesn't pump through your body any more as it should and it starts to build up around your heart making it hard to breath.
And I have slowly watched her and the love of her sisters as they struggle to make sure the right people know that this is not normal for their sister - she doesn't sleep all the time like this, something is wrong...
or is it just that she is waiting to go home?
(Names and places have been changed, these stories are true only in my mind)
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