Last October, my phone rang early in the morning and it was my mom. My family has a general rule that you don't call between 9 p.m.-9 a.m. unless you have bad news. With the words "Grandma's doctor says everyone should come now because they don't know how much time she has left" my world was turned upside down. Sure, my grandma was having some health problems but most elderly people in their 80s have a couple. As a long-time smoker (yes she quit in her 70s but the damage was done), she had what looked like lung cancer but the doctor didn't feel like putting my grandma through the testing was worth it because she was not going to seek the treatment. As I ran over my garbage can, breaking my taillight, I spent the next hour frantically driving to the hospital 16 weeks pregnant. Memories flashed through my mind about all the weekends we had spent with my grandma... the shopping trips that always involved a cookie/pop break, picking up the latest Nora Roberts or Danielle Steele book, her picking me up after work for a sleep over. Two days later we moved her to hospice. I spent almost every night sleeping in her room and after she slipped into a coma, sleeping in her bed. She picked our baby girl's name but then told me it didn't matter because I was having a boy (and she was right!). I was there when she woke up after two days of being in what they thought was a coma and spoke to her. Ten days after that first phone call she passed away... I was ten minutes away. My heart broke, not only at the loss of a woman who was a second mother to me but at the loss for my unborn child that he would never know his maternal great-grandma.
I don't write about this to make people sad but to give you the back story on why I could not read the book First Phone Call From Heaven for a long time after I downloaded on my Kindle. Just the title reminded me of my grandma and her passing was too fresh in my memory. However, about a week ago I was drinking a Pepsi and thought of my grandma (we always had to find a place that served Pepsi for our pop break) and I wasn't so sad anymore. I still missed her terribly but I was able to remember a lot of happy things without being sad. So when I looked for a book to read on my Kindle later that day, I picked this one.
I have to say I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to everyone. Without giving too much away, people in a small town began to receive phone calls from their deceased loved ones. Is it a hoax? Is it real? When news of these calls become known, it spreads like wildfire through the media. Protesters and believers flock into the town, turning it upside down. In the midst of it is a character named Sully who lost his wife and has a son who carries around a toy plastic phone waiting for a phone call from Mommy (yes, that one broke my heart multiple times). That's about all I can share but it was a good, easy read with some philosophical thinking behind it, as are most Mitch Albom books.
The biggest thing that hit home to me is that when we lose someone, we always wish we could have that one last conversation with that person. To say I love you, to say I will miss you, to say all those things that we took for granted we could tell them whenever we wanted. Sometimes I need a book like this to remind me to say what's on my mind and to always let my family and friends know that I care about them.
Uffdah...that's about as deep as I can get tonight. One more day of work and then two full days with my baby and husband-looking forward to it!
