abundant grace

My mother put the book she was reading up to her face and giggled in her shy manner. We were laughing together at something funny one of us had said––mother and daughter just having a  conversation. I looked over at her smiling face. She looked happy enough.

Ever since I was old enough to observe my parents' marriage, I dreaded the thought of one or the other dying. I could not imagine either one living without the other. Probably, and especially, my mother. It seemed inconceivable, and I wasn't the only one to think that.

God gave my parents 62 years together. My father's move to a care center the last year of his life granted mom a gradual ascent into living on her own. He's been gone four years this summer. 

As I looked over at my mother laughing, surviving life without my dad and even doing well at it, I had an epiphany. She is living on her own. I continued  thinking about that realization as I drove home from her house. Granted she says she misses dad more and more as time passes, but Mom has done what I never thought she could. And she is doing just fine. It's all due to God's abundant grace.