Mom had been a constant companion for us in those early years. She lived just a five-minute drive away and was more like a third parent than a grandparent to the kids. My husband worked two jobs and was often not around, so Mom filled in, going to school, church, and social events with us. We were over at her place or she was over at ours most days of the week.
After she died, I was lost. I picked up the phone twenty times a day to call her, only to remember mid-dial that she would never again be there on the other end. She lay in her hospital bed for 38 days after her stroke. I visited all but two - once for a snow storm and the other was the day I was picking out her funeral clothes - my brother said he would go for me. It was too much. But soon after I walked in the door to my apartment I got the call that she was gone - I would visit one last time, but this time she would not hear me sing to her nor feel my baby girl cuddling her on her hospital bed.
My job was not done. I needed to sort through her things, find pictures for her memorial, and figure out how to live without her. She had wanted to write her life's story but never got the chance. My children would not have her anymore and there was so much she wanted to teach them. So much she wanted to pass on. How could I possibly relay her legacy to three small children? How could I get past my own grief?
Years later I finally got the chance to write about their Nana. At first, I struggled, knowing that besides us, her faith was the most important thing in her life. I didn't know how to begin. Then one day, while going through her things, I found tucked away in her bible bag along with pictures of me, my brother, and my children, the bible verse alphabet she started in the 1980s. It was Mom's alphabet of faith.
This memoir is inspired by the bible verses Mom wrote on her list, posted around the house, hid in her purse, claimed, and clung to. Each chapter begins with a new verse and follows the ups and downs, heartaches, joys, and struggles of the tiny giant I called my mother.
