#1 Red Bear | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: #1 Red Bear | Previous Challenge Entry
By DJ Evans
04/05/08
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My mother was in a coma when her first grandchild, my daughter Hannah, was born. She was on a respirator, very ill with a rare lung infection that her body was unable to fight. She had been over the moon about becoming a grandmother--had wanted to postpone the surgery that actually caused the coma she ended up in, just so she would not risk not meeting her granddaughter.

The day after Hannah was born, my nurses conspired with Mom's nurses to arrange a meeting. Hannah and I (with my husband) were wheeled into intensive care where Mom was. My heart felt like it was being held underwater and burning for air as I placed Hannah, so tiny and peaceful, on my Mom's shoulder. As if they were already acquainted, Hannah snuggled right in and continued sleeping with her nose on Mom's cheek. Four days later, Mom passed away.

Hannah is four now and reminds me in her very special way that there is more beyond this little thing we call life. Many times she has bounced out of her room in the morning and told me that she walked with Grandma in a garden, or went to Grandma's house in Heaven (which I've been informed is a log cabin, something that would have suited Mom to a "T"). Hannah calls her the dark-haired Grandma with butterflies in her hair. I still don't know how she knows butterflies were Mom's favorite, because she hasn't seen any pictures of Mom with butterflies in her hair.

One night as I was tucking Hannah in, she asked for her red teddy bear to sleep with, the one with a gold "#1" on its chest. I told her that Grandma Carolyn had bought that for her before she was born. I did not tell her that Mom said "This is for my #1 grandchild" as she handed me the bear years earlier. The next morning, the first words out of my daughter's smiling mouth were,
"I'm Grandma's #1 grandchild!"

The sweetest dreams, perhaps, are those that we don't question when we dream them.

"It is as grandmothers that our mothers come into the fullness of their grace." ~Christopher Morley

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