Homegoing

How can one go from the euphoria of a wedding one day to the trauma and grief of a loved one's death the next day?  We had headed home from the wedding in Mississippi of our 22-year-old grandson. First, though, we had stopped at the church we used to pastor in Gulfport, Mississippi.  Howard had been asked to preach there.  Another wonderful reunion with old friends!

After stopping for the night somewhere in Arkansas, we had resumed our journey and were about halfway home when my cell phone rang.  Our granddaughter in Tennessee was crying and hysterically asking us to pray urgently for her older brother.  Our 28-year-old grandson was found unresponsive and not breathing. Earnest, beseeching prayers went up in our car.  It wasn't long until another granddaughter called and gave us the bad news.  Joshua was gone!

It was so unbelievable!  After the initial shock subsided, my thoughts went back to this, our first grandchild, and his early years in Mississippi where we lived.  I remembered taking him into the yard one hot summer day and letting the baby play with the hose.  He was fascinated with the gurgling water coming out as he held it upright.  "Wa-wa," he chortled.  Then he found out he could aim the hose. He had power in his control!

As he grew older, Joshua developed a love for chickens.  His father often hatched some in the spring. Joshua called the soft, yellow balls of fluff "biddies." "Mimi," he would say, "Don't you want some chickens?"  When I declined, he would say, "Not even some biddies?"  He couldn't imagine someone not in love with them as he was.  All he wanted for Christmas one year was a Big Bird.  He loved the plush, long-legged Sesame Street character I bought him and dragged it everywhere.

Joshua was a special-needs child.  It soon became apparent he was autistic.  Many years of struggle ensued for his parents as they tried to help him achieve developmental goals.  He graduated from high school.  He learned the computer.  Really, he was brilliant.  He had a rapier-sharp wit, wisecracking and giving quick comebacks, then laughing when I didn't catch on immediately.

Joshua loved movies.  His goal was to become a screen writer. Since I dabble in writing, he quizzed me and questioned me for tips on publishing  and how to achieve his goal.

Living far away in Oklahoma, I lacked the opportunity to interact with Josh in recent years.  He lived at home with his parents who kept a small farming operation with a garden for Joshua's benefit.  Our grandson loved animals and dutifully cared for them. Filling out data for his funeral today, the director asked what he did.  "Shall we say he was a farmer?" our daughter asked her husband, to which he said, "No. He was a writer."

As a young boy Joshua used to come to our house where we had lived all his life, and ask, "Mimi, aren't you ever going to move?"  Actually, I did, after 20 years.  Now Joshua has moved, too. To a big house of his own, with all the animals he would ever want to love and tend, perfect and complete. When his parents found him, our daughter said he looked angelic.  The angels had been in the room to take him home.