Lost One, Gained Even More

M and I took a little walk the other evening to get our mail and send out some (yes, belated!) Mother’s Day cards. On our way to the mailbox (it’s at the end of our street, in a cluster of locked boxes), M asked me who I was sending all the cards to. She asked if I was sending one to my (Great) Grandma Wewers, whom I have fondly spoken of and reminisced about to M, especially when praying with my special rosary that she gave me for my First Communion long ago.
Me: No, Sweetie… Grandma Wewers actually died awhile ago, so I’m not sending her a card.
M: Oh. (Thoughtful pause… then with the sincerest and most serious sigh) It just really breaks my heart when people die.
Me: (Understanding right than and there what it means in Scripture when it says that Mary ‘held all these things in her heart’!) Oh? Why is that?
M: Well… I mean, it’s actually good, because she’s in Heaven with Jesus, and that’s happy. But it’s sad, because, well… when you die, you can’t breathe, and that’s, you know, really hard and sad.

We got back to the house and I went to look for my rosary, remembering that I hadn’t seen my special rosary from Grandma Wewers for awhile… in fact, the last time I’d used it, it had been accidentally broken by one particular little child who currently likes to put everything in her mouth, and I had set it up on a counter, kind of forgetting about it! Well, I got home and frantically searched everywhere for it. Without going into long details, we figured out that it was unintentionally ‘tossed’ because it was broken, and the guilty party did not realize that it was a very special rosary (we do tend to ‘inherit’ numerous rosaries, and many have been broken along the way!) I was pretty devastated when we figured this out. With tears in my eyes, I took little C and went to put her to bed, resigned to feeling awful as I brooded over the situation. About five minutes later there was a gentle knock on the door. M popped her head in and whispered that she had something for me. I nodded, and motioned for her to come in, though not really feeling up to any conversation at the moment. I was pretty dead set on moping and wallowing in my sadness, deciding that I had the right to go to bed very upset that night, and there was nothing anyone could do- short of bringing me the broken rosary from a trash bag!- to make me feel better. Well, M walked over to the side of the bed where I was laying, and she handed me this:



(Reads: "From Grandma Wewers, To Mama")

In an instant, my emotions of anger and sadness were completely overtaken with the Love this precious child had just given to. As many other mothers have had such moments as these I’m sure, you will understand when I say that words cannot begin to express the overwhelming gratitude and love that swept over me like soothing and healing balm!
M: I made that for you, all by myself, Mama. I thought it all up for you and tried to make it just like the one you lost. See- if you want to pray that rosary, you can just use this one now! We did look for it, me and Papa- but we couldn’t find it in any of the trash bags.

In the end, I wound up losing something special, only to gain something even more special. This new homemade ‘rosary’ is one of the dearest, priceless gifts I’ve ever received. You can bet I won’t be breaking or losing this one!