"Make me a child again...

...just for tonight!"





Just before the visitation began our family gathered around one another at the mortuary.  The adults were still discussing plans and arrangements, but the children found a way to find joy in one of the darkest of times.  At one point, the little girls in their matching lavender and cream dresses held hands and danced to music unheard by the adults.  Their laughter echoed through the halls of a building that has seen so much sadness.  Eventually their parents hushed them, but not before I had a chance to envision my dad and mom seeing their great-granddaughters finding joy by just being a family.  




For just a moment, I wished to be a child again, to dance and laugh in the face of death.  But then I realized I was smiling and that in my own way, I was doing just that, finding joy when death was around me...thanks to my granddaughters.






There are those who don't believe in an after-life.  I do.  I also believe in a pre-mortal life where we were as a family then too.  We did not come into this family by chance.  We did not come into this world without attachments.  Those family bonds created in the pre-mortal existence are simply added upon by our mortal experience.  Matthew and I find such joy in watching our grandchildren, some whom have never even met in this life, loving each other instantly, as though they are simply reuniting after a long absence.  



More children will be added to our family in this life in their own due time.  Between now and then, those spirits, while waiting for a mortal body, will be with family who have been through this life already.  My mother and daddy are their teachers, preparing them for what is to come, telling them about how lucky they are to be coming to us and we talk about how lucky we are to have them.  



We look forward to the day we will hold them in our arms...


...and welcome them into our family circle.


...into our arms to dance with us.

Perhaps no poem more eloquently expresses the yearning I have to once again be young with my mother watching over me than the following poem.  One cannot read it and not think lovingly of their own mother.

Rock Me to Sleep

by Elizabeth Akers Allen 

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,

Make me a child again just for tonight!

Mother, come back from the echoless shore,

Take me again to your heart as of yore;

Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,

Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;

Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—      

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!

I am so weary of toil and of tears,—      

Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,—   

Take them, and give me my childhood again!

I have grown weary of dust and decay,—   

Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;

Weary of sowing for others to reap;—   

Rock me to sleep, mother – rock me to sleep!

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,

Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!

Many a summer the grass has grown green,

Blossomed and faded, our faces between:

Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,

Long I tonight for your presence again.

Come from the silence so long and so deep;—   

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Over my heart, in the days that are flown,

No love like mother-love ever has shone;

No other worship abides and endures,—      

Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:

None like a mother can charm away pain

From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.

Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep;—      

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,

Fall on your shoulders again as of old;

Let it drop over my forehead tonight,

Shading my faint eyes away from the light;

For with its sunny-edged shadows once more

Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore;

Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;—   

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!

Mother, dear mother, the years have been long

Since I last listened your lullaby song:

Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem

Womanhood’s years have been only a dream.

Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,

With your light lashes just sweeping my face,

Never hereafter to wake or to weep;—      

Rock me to sleep, mother, – rock me to sleep!