Bejeweled Barbie

  Today is Elliot's birthday. He has been my son's best friend since childhood. After I saw the reminder on Facebook, I began to think about something that Elliot did in 2014 that will forever be one of my most cherished memories. i don't really know if he knows just how much it meant to me then and still today.  Let me tell you about it. In 2014 my mother passed away. She had been hit by a car in 2004 with many injuries, the worst of which required brain surgery.  She lived 10 more years after that with multiple health challenges:    a broken hip, colon cancer and Parkinson's. She had "died" so many times. God raised her up each time to bring Him glory, which she did!  My son was very close to "Dee," as we all called her, and he spent quite a lot of his time with her when he was in. At the time he was a cross country truck driver, travelling to California every week and back. When my mom died, we were afraid to tell my son until he got to his destin...

 " Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone" Joni Mitchell, from "Big Yellow Taxi" Things have been weird for over 2 years now. Sometimes I feel like Rip Van Winkle waking up from a long sleep, unaware of all the changes that have taken place while we were cocooned at home, avoiding Covid.  It has lately become apparent that these life-altering sea changes are probably not temporary like we originally thought they were.  After two years, the very fiber of our world has indeed been transformed...and not in a good way.  If you scroll back in this blog, you can read a blog entry I made during the early days of this Covid nightmare. I speculated about how our lives might change, but at that time, I had no earthly idea how much. Let's look at a few areas that have been impacted. Death All of the traditional practices that go along with grieving a loved one have changed. This observation is actually what prompted the w...