Prayers For Melissa

December 29,2009

4:30 am

“It sure looked like you had fun making the gingerbread (graham cracker) House Village. I like that you were the Nursery for the Church. It tells me that the children of the village are important – and they ARE! Jesus said to His disciples – “Let the little children come to me, and do not forbid them, for such is the Kingdom of GOD.” -Momma

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I love you, Sara. The only thing I would have changed about the memory is that I could have been there to help you and that we could have had it taped to view again like we were doing with the old home videos yesterday.

I love you, Sara Joy!

-Momma”

If I remember correctly, my cousins, sisters, and I all collaborated on a big gingerbread house (that was probably way less impressive than I remember it being). Being the babies of the group, Priscilla and I were confined to one small area at the corner of the so-called masterpiece. Priscilla made a Rich Man who donated to the orphanage and gave him a twizzler scarf, and I used the icing, pretzels, and gumdrops to make a door to the nursery of the church. Meanwhile, Momma was in and out of the fun, too weak to help out that much. She wrote this entry early in the morning before anyone else was awake, most likely because she couldn’t sleep. 

Again I’m painfully reminded of how for three months, she was dying with the knowledge that her daughters would soon be entering a world without her there, and her youngest would barely remember one with her in it. While this may be true, it’s still clear to me by these words that I have a Momma who loved the children of God, who loved ME, and who wished she could have been there to see me become my own person. And even though she’s gone, I’m thankful that her loving spirit still surrounds me as I grow up without her. I often come back to the words inscribed in her own handwriting, “I love you, Sara.” It is a reminder to me that Momma wasn’t just a figment of my imagination, that she wasn’t just my sisters’ mother. She was my mother, too. And somehow, I can find comfort in that.

-Sara Joy

~ by Sara Espiritu on January 7, 2020.

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