Beautiful Stormy Night in the Ohio Valley

There's nothing like a stormy summer night in the Ohio Valley. The sweet smell of rain fills the cool night air, flashes of lightning brighten the September night sky, and the sound of thunder is rumbling along the Ohio River.  It is so peaceful and serene. 

I remember when I was young, my mom, my sisters, and I would sit on the front porch and watch the storms, counting how long between the lightning flashes and the thunder to figure out his far away the lightning was. I can't begin to count how many times we jumped out of our skin because of how loud the thunder was and soon after the lightning. Oh, how I miss those days.

My mom always told me that the thunder was the Angels bowling in Heaven, and the big booms were when one bowled a strike. She also said that the pouring rain is an Angel's tears falling from Heaven fire someone they love. Now, I think of her every time there's a storm since she's become an Angel in Heaven watching over my family.

Now, I get to sit here with my two youngest children, watch the storms, and share some things with them that their grandmother they never got to meet shared with me as a child. It's the little moments like this that they will remember. (We'll discuss my homemade grill moment another time... haha).

I Knew My Mom Was Dying

I had a wonderful life growing up. My mom and I were close, I could talk to her about anything. As a single mom, she was taking care of my sisters and I, taking care of her parents, and dealing with her own personal struggles in life. She was always there for anyone who needed her. I was in high school when she got sick. After that, I held back a lot because I didn’t want to put more on her than she was already dealing with. I started helping out more with taking care of my family to ease the burden on her in hopes that she would be able to rest and get better. Things didn’t work out that way though.

Throughout the course of her illness, I found out things about my family that I never expected, and others that I was sort of waiting to get confirmation of. Most of those things I accepted easily because there was nothing that I could do about them or they didn’t affect me personally. For the most part, those things were far enough in the past that there was nothing to be done or there was nothing that needed to be done. Every family has a history, and I learned some parts of mine. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t deep, dark secrets that were never meant to be known. It was just personal things about family members that surprised me. The things I did find out about one certain family member did sort of surprise me, even though I had an inclination about some of these things. What amazed me the most was that this person denied the facts, even with the proof in front of them in black and white.

During my final year of high school, I had this premonition that my mom was going to leave me. I knew that she was doing her best to not let us see how sick she really was. She was doing her best to give us the best possible life she could, even with the circumstances being what they were. A lot of things happened, eventually leading to me leaving home around the time of my high school graduation.

When I left home, I moved in with my then-current boyfriend and his family. I felt like I was losing my mind and just had to get away from all of the pain I was feeling inside. Seeing my mom so sick was just killing me. I knew in my heart that I was going to lose her and I couldn’t bear the pain of knowing I would be living the rest of my life without her, that I would never be able to confide in her my fears, share my joys and triumphs, and that she would not be there to see my children grow up (I didn’t have children at that point, but prayed I would someday). I had no clue what I would do without her. I knew she didn’t want to leave us, but God apparently needed her for something bigger.

As time went by, she got worse. She suffered much longer than I had expected. There are days that I blamed myself because I left home. When I left home, I left my family behind as well. They wanted nothing to do with me once I left. Some even told me that it was my fault she was getting worse. There was only one person in my family who understood why I left when I did and the way I did. She understood all that I had been through, listened to me talk, and told me it was okay to cry. She was the one who, even before I became a teenager, seemed to understand me. She helped me realize that it wasn’t my fault that Mom got worse and that the inevitable was happening. This wonderful woman was my great-aunt.