Led by the Angels

Like so many days, my mom is on my mind today. When I wrote the song "Upside Down" about her years ago, I wrote a line that says, "I'll spend my best days with you...and I'll need you on my worst." Those words have turned out to be truer than I even knew at the time.

My best days and my worst days are when Mom seems to be the closest to me.

Today is a big day for me. I'm playing at Uncle Calvin's tonight. WOW. Big, big deal for me. I'm excited, I'm nervous...
When I rode my bike this morning (which is my MOM's bike that she told me she wanted me to have just a few days before she died) I had a conversation with her in my head. It seemed real. She gave me a pep talk. When my part of the conversation said, "I wish YOU could be there", her part answered, "I will be."

I am a subsciber to an email that gives weekly writing prompts. I decided to busy myself with one of those. And the topic was, "What was your favorite first book and WHY." First, I wrote about the childhood favorite, "Ramona the Pest." But because I couldn't remember much about it, I then wrote about my favorite adult book. A Prayer for Owen Meany. As I wrote about why it was my favorite, and my experience with it, it stirred up more memories and emotions related to my mom.

I read the book and LOVED it. I recommended it to a book club group Mom and I were in years later. Most people in the group didn't like it as much as I did. But Mom did. She loved it too. She loved it so much, that when her own mother died, she wrote one of the ending quotes we loved from the book, "...into paradise may the angels lead you", and put it in her burial. Just days after Mom died, I was digging around through some of her stuff and I saw where she had written that down and I remembered what she had used it for. My family and I put that quote at the top of the invitation we sent out to her friends for her Memorial.

So it's just so coincidental (and I know there ARE no coincidences!) that I was led to write about that book today. I wonder all the time where Mom is. It's so hard for me still to comprehend that she is somewhere far away from me. I love the quote. And I hope it is the answer to my question of where is Mom. She's in paradise...and she was led by the angels.