Pennies from Heaven!!

It is funny how Christmas time allows for a flood of memories to take over.  Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year, although when I was a kid it seemed Christmas was much more enjoyable and exciting.  We would gather with family (aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins...) and just enjoy the laughter and love we all shared for one another.  I miss those days when life was simple. Life has become complicated.  As adults we have responsibility and we have to do the "right" thing.  I don't know if I like it...lol 

Today a friend of mine posted on her facebook wall that it had been 2 years since the death of her brother who I was also friends. I was thinking, WOW!  Two years!!  Like my blog's title "Milestone's should be celerated" it make me think of all of the milestones I have had in my lifetime.  When I say milestones, I mean life changing moments when you know that life is goin to be different from that moment on.  Of course the birth of a child is one at the top of the list, maybe your first kiss, or you wedding...maybe even something as simple as a dinner date or a phone conversation.  A milestone can be as small or as big of a production that you want it to be but you just know it will change your life from here on after.  This past year has been a milestone year for me.  My baby, graduated high school....and his birth was one of my most favorite milestones in my life.  My oldest son (not by birth but by choice) left to serve our country in Afghanistan, I miss him terribly but I have faith and prayer that he will be safe.  I have also been blessed with a grandchild.  Dustin's and his wife Kaitlyn blessed me with a baby boy in July of this year.  He is the most precious baby boy I have ever had the opportunity to love.  He makes me smile and he just makes my heart melt.  I can't explain how grandbabies make you feel.  It is like you have an extension of what is yours and you just know that all is right with the world.  Also, this year I finally got a job.  Not exactly the type of job I had been looking for but I am in the school trying to make a difference in a child's life.  Some tragic milestones have encompassed my life this year...It is silly how people we know as children and go all through school together but loose touch with as adults somehow reenter our world.  The power of technology and social media has allowed us to reconnect with schoolmates, old flames, and favorite/not so favorite teachers.  In this past year the class of 1984 has lost at least four classmates.  This places a new perspective on your own mortality. It just makes us think.  Life does not always treat us with milestones in our lives that are known for leaving positive light on our lives.  This year I have been given these types of milestones.  You know the kind of stones that life throws in your way just to remind us we do not have all of the control?  Well, we don't have control over our destiny that has been written in stone for sometime but we do have control over how we get there.  I only pray and hope that my destiny is heaven because without that thought what is it all worth?

Heaven means so much to so many, but to me it is a place of peace, beauty, and love.  I am not sure if there will be angels singing, or if there will be harps playing abound but I do know that it will be peaceful, and beautiful, and full of love.  Heaven is what you want it to be.  Your dreams of what it is suppose to be.  I only hope I am worthy of getting to my heaven.  I want you to know, once I am there....I will send pennies so you shall think of me when I am gone.  I know sounds kind of morbid doesn't it?  It doesn't to me, for you see, I was blessed to have my grandmother, Kathryn Manley, in my life for 43 years.  She meant the world to me and still does to this day.  When my papaw died in 1980 I was 12 years old almost 13 and I thought that my whole world had ended that day.  I watched as my nanny picked herself up and lived a life so full of life.  I watched as she did the things she wanted to do and went where she wanted to go.  She was opinionated and didn't care if it offended you or not.  She spoke her mind.  And when she was giving you a lecture on something, the one thing that always stood out was her crooked fingers she would point while trying to make a point.  God, I miss her so much.  I still have her phone number in my phone.  I can not bring myself to erase it.  Right after my papaw died, she would find random change laying around her house in just random spots.  Sometimes she would find change under stuff that she knew nobody had been around.  I can remember her saying out loud one day, " Bob, if you are going to send me money, please start sendig bills because this change won't buy a damn thing!"  That's the was she always was.  You had to laugh.  I use to tease her and say, "Well, when you get to heaven, don't forget to send us bills and not change."  we would just laugh.  The day we buried her, I found a penny heads up in a random place.  I can not explain it, all I know is I was there one minute and the penny was not there, I turned back around and there was the penny....looking up at me, heads up, as if to say...I have arrived, I am here...I will always be watching over you, I love you.  That filled my heart with so much joy, saddness, and laughter all at the same time.  Because, now when I find pennies in the most random places....I just smile and say they are Nanny Pennies from Heaven.  She is thinking of me today.  I miss her so much it hurts.  There are so many things I want to talk to her about and tell her and get her opinion on and I can't.  I am missing you this Christmas Nanny....I hope you know I love you .........     Merry Christmas in Heaven Nanny....give Papaw a hug and a kiss for me.  I love you! 

That is all from me tonight...till next time....Ciao!!