May 2012
3 posts
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The Year of Goodbyes
In December 2011, our family said goodbye to Uncle Dave, just like we did to Mom twenty years earlier. And it was just as sudden and sad and hard. A little over a year earlier, we had said goodbye to Uncle Rick and this new loss reminded us of our certainty that it never gets easier for those we love to leave us.
Uncle Dave could be just as rough-and-tumble as his brothers when he wanted, but he...
April 2012
1 post
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Homeward Bound
I’m quite nostalgic today and am thinking about family, friends, and others who have ever experienced loss, which includes most of us. I can’t shake the feeling that although all of this is fleeting, there is a purpose that compels us to make the most of our time here.
Homeward Bound
We’ve come a long way to get here, heads high
and feet to the ground, we travel lightly...
December 2011
1 post
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Remembering Uncle Dave
I don’t have any recent photos of my Uncle Dave—Mom’s older brother—but Mom had taken a lot of pictures of Uncle Dave when he was younger and of him and my Aunt Linda when they were dating. I looked through Mom’s old photo albums and picked a few good ones to share.
We’ll miss you, Uncle Dave.
Messing around with Grandma and Grandpa Baldwin July 1971
August...
October 2011
1 post
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On Loving and Losing
Mom kept journals when she was pregnant with my brother and me. On February 16, 1981, she wrote to me about the love she shared with my dad. The entry read, “Someday I hope you’ll be able to experience a relationship like ours, but I know it’s a little too much for you right now. Someday though, you will understand all my grown-up talk.”
I wouldn’t be born for...
September 2011
2 posts
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My Mother's Mother
Donna Dean Baldwin {Jones} August 8, 1925 ~ September 20, 2000
{This photo was taken sometime in 1941. Grandma would have been around 16.}
I can’t explain the importance of being mothered. When my own mom died in 1991, it was a natural progression for my grandmother to step in as a maternal figure. We lived next to Grandma until I was in high school, so she was the woman I gleaned the...
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August 2011
6 posts
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Happy birthday, Dad!
To celebrate, I dug out some old pictures of you…
It’s hard to believe you were ever this little, but I know it’s you because you’re still just as mischievous as you look in this photo.
Tempting your luck with a bear at Smokey Mountain National Park. You always were brave, especially during my teenage years. I’m not sure what would be scarier: coming face to...
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20 Years
Today marks 20 years without Mom.
I remember the day she left, the day I stood
on our porch
in a pink nightshirt,
tears rolling down, down, down into
a small circle on the fabric below my chin.
I remember waking up that morning with a
feeling of dread,
I remember the way Dad’s
face looked and the fear
and uncertainty
that formed into the pit in my stomach.
I remember waiting for...
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June 2011
2 posts
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Goodbye, Uncle Rick
(This post is lovingly dedicated to my uncle. Thank you Ricky and Stephanie for graciously allowing me to share this story. For the multitude of ways that family has changed me and challenged me to love in the midst of my own brokenness, I am thankful.)
In the fall of two thousand ten, I drove to the place where my mother grew up, knowing that hope and pain would be likely companions. The...
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Choose Your Own Adventure
MY MOTHER
When I was very small, I went with my parents to an even smaller Baptist church. I liked the hymns. I spent most of the time drawing on the back of the weekly bulletin, which kept me quiet enough for my parents’ liking. Dad often fell asleep, his head leaning toward the floor as if in prayer. Only he wasn’t. But the wooden pews were uncomfortable at best and before long he would have...