Remembering A Very Special Lady

Happy Thursday my friends!  Is this winter weather crazy or what?! 

One of the things I didn't tell you about, from my trip back home to Arkansas a few weeks ago, is about my mama's "talk" she had with me and my baby sister on Friday (the day after I got there).  It ended up having me and my sister both in tears and I wasn't sure if I was going to even make it through the rest of the trip. (When she first sat us down, I was afraid it was something very serious about her health such as Cancer, or something like that so I was terrified to hear what she had to say)  Anyway, I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before or not, but my maternal grandmother was my 2nd mom.  Besides my mother, I was extremely close to my grandmother and truth be told, I was probably closer to her than my own mom when I was growing up.  We lost my grandmother about 6 years ago this April and it was extremely devastating to me.

(My grandmother and mom from years ago:) 

My grandmother was cremated and my grandfather (not my mom's father), of course, got her ashes.  Well, he got remarried about 6 months ago and called my mom and told her that if she wanted her ashes then she could go get them (he lives in Dallas, TX), so she did.  So finally, after almost 6 years, my grandmother was back where she should have been all along - by my mom's side.  (Long story about grandfather - will save for another time.  Anyway, my grandmother's urn was "HOME" for Christmas.  My sister and I had talked amongst ourselves that after about 2 years we would approach mom about getting some of our grandmother's ashes (not much, because we felt that grandmother's ashes belonged with our mom)  But since she had just gotten her back home, then we wanted to wait for awhile so she had time with her mom. 

That Friday before my mom left for the night, she told us that my grandmother had been to visit her the day before and wanted her to give us something.  The first thing she handed us was a card from our grandmother and I didn't even get one sentence read before I fell apart and started bawling.  Here is my card:

(not sure why this said happy birthday on it - guess this was all she could find )



Then, after I got calmed down (somewhat) she pulled out a beautiful jewelry bag that held this:

 A gorgeous heart shaped necklace that.......holds......my.grandmother's.ashes!  I just could NOT stop crying - I was SO happy for so many reasons that I can't even begin to explain it all.  Before this I thought I had finally gotten past the point where I would stop crying when I started talking about my grandmother - however, after that day - it was obvious that I, in fact, had not.  Anyway, I had never heard of anything like this before and was so surprised when I got the necklace and that they held her ashes - it was one of the (if not the most) precious and special gift my mother could have ever given to me.  And the fact that she thought of it all on her own made it even more special because that meant she knew how close we were to our grandmother and wanted us to have her with us all of the time too.

Whew... that turned into a lot longer than I expected it to but if you read this far, thanks for reading.  I've gotten a lot of mixed emotions about this as some people realize how special it is to have and other people thought it was gross to have her ashes around my neck.  So... no matter what your opinion is, this special token from my mother means the world to me.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!  Tomorrow is Friday thankfully!

Lots of love and hugs,