11 Years Ago Today

Eleven years ago today was a post-planning day.  May 21, 2001 we were done with students and we were cleaning up our rooms and finishing up.  Our whole family, except Patti and I,  were all in the Keys on vacation.  We couldn’t go because we weren’t done with school yet.  Funny how things change.  I was at my mom and dad’s house with Patti and Makiah, getting ready for dinner and the phone rang.  We had no idea how that phone call would change our lives.

Mom, Daddy, Robyn and her boys had left for the Keys on Saturday. Momma was SO excited – she was packed early. On Sunday night, they all watched Touched by an Angel and Mom made a comment about how she hoped when it was her time to go, she hoped the angel Andrew came from her. 

 

On Monday, while we were at work, they all went to Bahia Honda.  Bahia Honda is a state park and several years ago, it was named one of the most beautiful beaches in the United States.  Mom had had her first massage a week earlier and when the masseuse told her to think of the perfect place, she thought of Bahia Honda.

 

They all floated through that gap in the bridge and came out on the other side. Mom couldn't catch her breath – Ken carried her out of the water.

 

The phone rings, Patti answers and immediately falls apart. I get on the phone and hear – “You’re mom had an accident.  You need to get here.” 

Daddy has a friend named Dave Norris who has his own plane and his pilots license. We were told he would meet us at our tiny airport in a hour.  We grabbed some stuff and left.

I’d never flown in that small plane – and hope to never again. There was lightning, he had to keep changing direction to avoid the lightening.  But where I was sitting, I could see the little gauge that shows lightening strikes – it wasn’t pleasant.  It seemed forever and it seemed no time at all.  I prayed and prayed – and finally understood Romans 8:26  

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Read it this way:

He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.

I was doing a  LOT of wordless sighs and aching groans.

We landed in Marathon – the airport is tinier than ours. It was after midnight – there was nobody there but our daddy. He picked up us, took Dave Norris to the house  they had rented and left him and took Patti and I to the hospital, where we saw our Mom lying there, unresponsive. We were told she'd had a heart attack and the doctor had put her on life support.  

I had no idea how that day would end when I woke up that morning.  May 21, 2001– the worst day I’d ever had in my life.