Guest post by Patsy Bowden McCrory

After thirty-five years of teaching, I retired in 2008 to care for my mother-in-law who had acute lymphoblastic leukemia. We had one afternoon to break down my daughter’s room for a hospital bed to be delivered after Granny’s second extensive stay in the hospital. This time she would be under hospice care at our home.

Granny had been the caregiver. I was forty-one years old before God blessed us with our only child, and she kept our daughter while I taught. Granny was the only one we trusted with her care. Granny fed, diapered, and cared for Amy for her first five years so my husband and I could work.

Now I was called on to feed, diaper, and care for Granny. Luckily, I was old enough to retire by then. She did not want to be a burden, but I was the only one in the family who could afford to retire to take care of her. She never complained.

Amy was a senior in high school and was about to enter Ole Miss. She moved into the adjoining room and slept on a daybed. Granny would ring a bell beside her hospital bed at all hours of the day and night when she needed help. We changed her diapers, cleaned bedpans, and helped her eat and drink.

One of the sweetest memories I had with her was after a thunderstorm. I pulled her wheelchair out under the carport and we watched a double rainbow in the east as the sun was setting in the west. Our hectic life came to a stop. At that moment, all was right with the world, and God was definitely in His Heaven.

Family members came that August to celebrate her eightieth birthday. She was all smiles and loved seeing everyone. Eight days later, she was no longer eating. I was not ready to give up on her.

My sister-in-law saw me using a straw to drop water into her clenched mouth. She held my hand and warned that Granny was no longer able to swallow. “Patsy, she will choke to death. It’s time to put it in the hands of the Lord.”

Hours later, we stood around Granny’s bed telling her how much we loved her as her hands, feet, and legs began to turn purple. There was nothing more we could do.

Letting her go was so hard. For months, she had been my main purpose for life.

But Granny believed as do we, and she joined God in His Heaven. That has been our comfort.

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
John 11:25-26

Patsy Bowden McCrory has taught in DeSoto County, MS, schools for forty-two years. She has also served as reporter, photographer, and news editor for the DeSoto Times newspaper and currently does freelance writing for several state newspapers and magazines while trying to complete a book about a childhood friend in her hometown of Ashland, MS.

Tracy Crump dispenses hope in her award-winning book, Health, Healing, and Wholeness: Devotions of Hope in the Midst of Illness (CrossLink Publishing, 2021). A former intensive care nurse, she cared for her parents and her mother-in-law and understands both the burdens and joys of caregiving. Her devotions have been featured in Guideposts books, The Upper Room, and many other publications, and she has contributed 22 stories to Chicken Soup for the Soul® books. She also conducts writing workshops, freelance edits, and proofreads for Farmers’ Almanac. But her most important job is Grandma to five completely unspoiled grandchildren.