It is not goodbye...

It is not goodbye, it is see you later!

On Sunday, October 16th, this world lost a beautiful woman and Jesus called home one of his angels, my Aunt Mary. For those of you who didn't know my Aunt Mary, I can only pray that you have someone in your life like my Aunt Mary, although I recognize that she was an extremely remarkable individual. It is hard to imagine how someone who I didn't get to see all that much could have such a great impact on my life, but that is just a testament to the type of person Aunt Mary was. My Aunt Mary was a strong independent Christian woman. She loved to garden, do cross-word puzzles, to be surrounded by her family, and she loved the color purple. She would give you shirt off her back and she had an uncanny knack of making everyone feel special!

There are so many great times I remember with Aunt Mary -- like how she would cook us chicken nuggets and mac-n-cheese, would give us as many sodas as we wanted, would watch the same movies over and over again because we loved them, how she kept a special stack of books for when we came over, how she would just sit and watch us be us, how she would let us wreck her house playing hide-and-go-seek, how she called us 'darlin' so frequently that my brother started calling her Darlin (when he was very young) and how she would proudly show us her garden and let us help pick things -- but I will never forget how much she enjoyed talking to me about basketball. She was SO proud of me and always made that known. She even dug through her special collection of collector basketball cards and gave me some of her favorites (that I still cherish).

After one of our visits with Aunt Mary my siblings and I decided we were going to collect rocks. I collected Amethyst rocks because they were Aunt Mary's favorite (they are purple). See, the beauty of the relationship that us kids had with Aunt Mary was that we recognized how special she was from a very young age!

Even when Aunt Mary was diagnosed with Alzheimer and had to move into an assisted living, she said that she felt that God had put here there with a purpose, so she could teach others there about His love. Truly a special person! So when I got the phone call on Sunday, my heart rejoiced for her and selfishly broke for me. Hunter and I packed up for a trip to AR. This was the first time that Hunter had been to AR and the first time that he had been on the plane. It was an experience but all in all he was wonderful.

He LOVED looking at the airplanes outside.

And running back and forth to the window....haha, I am sure the other people waiting loved that!

Snack time while we waited for everyone else to get off the plane. Hunter actually slept through the entire flight to AR and woke up as we were waiting to get off the plan.

Then Aunt Kathy and Uncle Lance picked us up from the airport and took us to Aunt Shelley's house. I thought that after all of the travel, Hunter would be ready to sleep but boy was I WRONG! He played with ALL of Kendall's toys....

Had a midnight snack.....or 12:30am snack....

And anything else he could think of so he didn't have to go to sleep. I think he *finally* went to sleep around 3am. The next morning we were surrounded by family and friends as we honored Aunt Mary. Hunter was an angel and sat quietly in my Mom's lap the entire service. Here he is, out cold, on the way to the burial. 

It felt good to be surrounded by our family while celebrating the life of Aunt Mary. I am truly blessed to have know and have been loved by Aunt Mary! I just pray that one day I can be someone's "Aunt Mary" and that our family can continue on with her legacy of loving the Lord and loving each other. I know how special she was to all of us! 

Aunt Mary 'Darlin'-- we love you ALWAYS! This is not goodbye, it is see you later!