Connected

I Remember

I woke up today thinking how strange it is not to have Stella, in my life.  I miss her, and the idea that I will never see nor hear her again, saddens me deeply.

One of the last moments, which I had with Stella, is a memory that I continue to replay in my head.  Jill and I were at the hospital and it was late, 4:30 in the morning.  Stella had finally closed her eyes to go to sleep, so Jill started to take some of our things down to the car.  As I was packing up, Stella opened her eyes again, and with her very familiar voice I heard: “Hey, hey look who is here.”  And then she saw Merry, our dog, and she said Merry, come here Merry, and tried to reach for her.  I went over to Merry, picked her up, and then Stella patted her bed for me to sit down next to her.  As she petted Merry, she said: “How cute.”  Stella then kissed me and then kissed me again.  After that, she did not say much that I could understand, but she kept talking to me, and I acknowledged what she was saying, in which she seem to find comfort.  She then laid her head back down and shut her eyes and fell asleep.

This is one of the last moments that I had with this amazing woman.  The next day she would be released to go home into hospice and within a week, she would die.

But as I think about Stella, I am reminded of the many moments of kindness and warmth that she extended to me.

I remember when I had my wisdom teeth pulled and the doctor did not use any sutures; so I continued to bleed at home.  Stella was there, trying to stop the bleeding in my mouth by packing the wounds with gauze, giving me salt water to rinse my mouth, making me rice pudding (which I ate for four days), and sitting by my bedside reading the Bible to me and yelling at my dentist.

I remember when I ran over Charlie’s leg, our first dog, with the car; though working full time at Edison, I barely had a dollar to my name and certainly could not afford the fifteen hundred dollar bill to fix Charlie’s leg.  Without a second thought, Stella gave us the money to have Charlie’s leg fixed.  Not only did she love Charlie too, but she knew how much he meant to me.

I remember Stella telling me how important education was, but her words always came with action.  She encouraged me to go back to school, and paid for my books, when there was no way I could have afforded them — Stella was always generous – we have a stack of un-cashed checks (thankfully things picked up, it must have been that education) which bear witness to her amazing spirit of kindness.

I remember sharing many Marri’s pizza and SuperMex in Long Beach, California, with Stella.

I remember her watching all three of our dogs in Maine, while Jill and I went away, and her telling my boss, who called that I would not be able to go to a meeting, because she thought I would be too tired.  He said just have her call me; I was mercilessly teased by my colleagues over that comment.

I remember our many trips with Stella to Florida, before we lived there, and watching her interact with her sister, brothers and sister -in-laws.  It was such a pleasure to not only see them all together; but to also get to know them, and come to love Stella’s siblings, as she did.

I remember our car rides to Dairy Queen, where we would all get ice-cream cones, drive around while we ate them, and come home feeling like we had had a special outing.

I remember having Pat, Stella’s longtime friend, from California, come out to stay with Stella for a visit, at our house in Florida.  I had meet Pat in California, having taken Stella to see her one day.  It was a true blessing to watch these two women of God, sit on the veranda, drinking their coffee, talking, reading their Bibles,  praying together, and watching them shop!

I remember eating Primanti’s Pizza and their great sandwiches on the beach in Fort Lauderdale.  We would go down to the beach, buy our pizza, and root beer for Stella, and then walk over to the sand and sit down to eat, watch sea birds, smell the ocean, listen to the waves, and have Stella point out every plane that went by.  I know her children often say that if Stella had had the opportunity at a better formal education she would have been a surgeon, but I think her alternative career dream would have been a pilot.

I remember her endless and tirelessly trying to teach me Spanish.  We would sit at the dining-room table reading children’s books in Spanish, while she gently but spiritedly would correct my accent and vocabulary, we would conjugate verbs, try simple conversation, and finally if nothing else was working that day, she would suggest we read the Bible in Spanish.  I think she secretly prayed that God would intervene in my language skills.

I remember buying a desk top first, and then a laptop computer for Stella.  After we would finish my Spanish classes, her computer classes would begin.  In between, Jill would bring us lunch, and comment how great we were both doing, even though it may not have been true that day.  Stella loved learning, and I bought her a Bible computer program, to facilitate research.  I suppose we both resorted to God for our student.

I remember taking her to Target and Wal-Mart, not to shop, though she loved to shop, but to ride around on the electric wheel chairs, as it became more difficult for her to walk on her own.  The first time I put her behind the wheel, she took off like she had been driving these things all her life, and never even looked back, to see where I was – good thing I had the key to the Jeep and my running shoes on.

I remember how upset Stella would be if I passed by a yard sale, even if we were on our way to someplace else, she always wanted to stop.  Our last yard sale, was a second hand store, which was going out of business.  On Sundays, since coming back to New England, we would take Stella to church, before the service we would find different things to do, to give her more of an outing.  On one Sunday in October, driving around Haverhill, Massachusetts, we spotted this small store, with its wares outside.  Jill of course volunteered to go in, she loves second hand stores as much as Stella did; but from her seat in the car, Stella spotted a crystal lamp.  “I want that lamp.”  Jill was on the job, she went into the store, and found out the very heavy lamp was only five dollars, and it worked.  Stella was thrilled at her find.

I remember how little it took to make Stella happy.  Like Jill, Stella loved surprises, but they did not have to be big surprises.  She would react the same to an apple pie from McDonalds as she would to an exotic new orchid.

I remember her sharing stories about Cuba, about Ignacio, and about their life and work on the island; and about the day they escaped Cuba.  She loved Cuba, she loved serving God and sharing the Gospel.

I remember her walking around our neighborhood, first without help, then with a cane, then with the walker, and finally with us aiding her in the wheel chair.  When she was alone, she would carry her “Smiley Jesus” tracks, and pass them out to everyone she met.  Sometimes, she would go up our long driveways, and tuck them into a screen door; when that became too much, she would toss them like Frisbees.  She never knew how many people knocked on our door, to bring back the little tracks, telling us that Stella lost it, or threw it on their driveway, or that they were still Jewish.  Twenty odd years before, Stella had purchased thousands of those tracks for Jill and me to put in our “Little Bags of Hope”, which were sack lunches we made for homeless people in Long Beach and Los Angeles, California.

I remember my last Thanksgiving with Stella.  I am so glad I spent the time with her, it was a privilege to sit by her side and watch her interacting with her world.

I remember . . . there is just so much.

As Christians, we believe that when a person dies, that they actually live in heaven with Christ, our Savior.  However, all these memories also make a person live in our hearts, after they have died.  She lives with all of us who share memories of this truly amazing woman.

Go, disConnect  the television, computer, and smartphone, and instead create a memory with someone you love.  I am glad I have so many memories with Stella.

This entry was posted on January 2, 2013 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Connected, RightSide, SlideShow, The Reverend’s Ignacio and Stella Cooper Mosqueda Book Scholarship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.