My Version of Heaven

With all this packing up - we're trying to reduce our junk. Jason calls them my hiding places ... I stash my junk under tables, beds and in closets. I really want to de-clutter the new house, especially with a crawler on the way! Anyway ... that was a long way of introducing the fact that I found a letter from my mom. A few in fact. Being the pack rat that I am ... I kept all of her letters from my freshman year in college. I found one that was a gem. I must have just called her all upset ... with the freshman home sickness and I was not taking a great liking to the soccer coach.  She started out by telling me how much she loved me and that I wouldn't understand that love until I had my own children. I get it now, mom. She goes on to tell me things like I'm Irish and a Woodburn and I need to fight, fight, fight. Being my mom, she did use a little profanity to get her point across. She also told me to pray to God and St. Jude. I loved reading the part about St. Jude. My mother loved him, even named my sister after him. If you don't know the story .... St. Jude is the Saint of Desperate Cases, you pray to him and promise a type of sacrifice if you will. To my understanding ... that's how St. Jude's Children's Hospital got it's name. Someone prayed to St. Jude and built a shrine in his honor. Well, moments after my sister was born ... there were complications and doctors did not know what was wrong ... my mom prayed to St. Jude and asked that he save her life and she promised to name my sister after him. So, it's Holly Jude. Back to the letter .... reading my mom's letter took me back to that feeling of having a mom. If you've lost your mother, you know what I'm talking about. The feeling of being coddled and adored. Not that other people in your life don't coddle and adore you, but nobody can run warm bath water like a mother. I was actually able to apply her words to my current life. I read the letter to my sister and I think she was able to relate it to something in her life as well. I plan to read it to my dad and brother, just in case they need to dig down deep to the Irish Woodburn part of them.

Jason never met my mother, so I loved reading it to him because it was an insight into her personality. I went through all the other letters ... many of them brief that she sent with a check "Deposit this, watch your money. I love you. Tell Holly I love her also." (my sister and I both went to Tech) Jason and I laughed because she must have ran out of paper once and wrote a small note on wax paper. Jason said "so that's where you get it." Yep, that's where I get it.

This August will be ten years since she passed, hard to believe. People sometimes ask me if I talk or pray to her. In a sense. We all have different versions of heaven or what happens to people after they pass. My version changed once my mom left us. I don't like to pray to her for good things to happen in my life or to talk to her every day. Because Joanne Woodburn is nobody's genie, not even mine. I don't like to think of her as a 24/7 answering service ... sitting on a cloud and just waiting around for someone to grant a self-serving wish. I don't even like to think of her as being aware of the day to day goings of her family. Wouldn't watching your son get in a near fatal car crash and not be able to help be the definition of .... well.....hell? And, I don't think she's an automatic saint because she's passed. Now, my mother is as close to a saint as anyone I've ever met ... but I think she's still Joanne. Still has a belly laugh that sometimes turns into snorts .... and still makes a few profane slips. Like all of us, I have no idea what heaven is like .... I just know that she's somewhere else. We almost lost her once before she ultimately passed and when she came out of it, she talked about hearing the most beautiful music she had ever heard and she didn't want to leave. So, I know there's music in heaven. I like to think of her as doing what she loved ... which was taking care of people and playing with babies. She LOVED babies. I like to think of her as being independent wherever she is ... because she was a very independent person and that was taken from her in her last year of life. She couldn't cook, drive, shop ... and was rarely alone. If you've seen the movie "What Dreams May Come" ... I kind of see heaven as a version of that. I also believe in souls. In my beliefs, we all have one. I thank God every night for the little soul he picked out for Jacob .... we couldn't be more pleased. I like to think my mom got to meet the souls of her four granchildren before they came to us.

My mom passed when I was 21 .... so it was right before our relationship had moved more towards friends vs. parental/authority. She and I were always best friends ... but we were just about touching on the stage where I would start telling her how late I was really out to the night before and what I was doing at 3 AM. Not that she was clueless to it - it just wasn't totally up for discussion just yet! I love that all of my friends treat their mothers so well ... I have to admit I notice .... but I'm always happy to see how much they honor them. If my mother were here, I'd buy her a pedicure. She would never dream of paying somebody money to paint her toes, but she would secretly love it.

Well now you know my version of heaven -  we all have different ones. I guess I just like to think it's a version of whatever we want it to be. I don't talk about my mom much in this blog because I don't have the writing talent to do her justice. Many of you never met her and I could never fully capture her for you - I'd be leaving a facet of her beautiful soul out. Anyway, sorry if this was depressing .... her birthday is this month and 10-year passing in a few months, so I had wanted to write something on it!