I’m standing here in my kitchen staring at a picture on my Google Home screen that was taken exactly 1 year ago today. I’m smiling in the picture, happy to be surrounded by family at our amazing Wilkins Family Reunion.

As I continue to stare deeply at this picture a million thoughts flood my mind. We had just moved to Missouri 2 weeks prior to the picuteer being taken. Just three days after we moved here we received the heart-wrenching news that our beloved mother Lois had been diagnosed with asymptomatic Parkinson’s disease, also known as Parkinson’s Plus. Unlike Parkinson’s, this particular rare strand of the disease was known to rapidly decrease life span and quality of life would be known to diminish at an increasingly fast pace.

My Dad sat me down a couple of days later and explained to me that we would make mom the most comfortable we could with the short time she had left to live. He told me they would take all of our families on separate vacations to be able to spend time with each of us on a more personal level. He told me that he wanted to let mom have all access to anything she wanted and make as many memories as possible in the time she had left. He bawled as he talked to me, and I sobbed in his arms as we mourned together.

How could it be that my strong mother was withering away so uncontrollably and without hesitation? How could we lose her? My life could not exist without her in it, at least I felt it couldn’t.

The reunion was so fun, all 11 of my mother’s siblings came up to me at one point or another and said how sorry they were that she was going through what she was. They gave me words of encouragement and comfort as I cried with them talking about how we couldn’t believe it could be real. Despite all the sad news, we had a fantastic week of fun and innumerable unifying experiences as a family. It was a week to remember a week of epic celebration of the reality that families were created to bring us joy and love here on earth and throughout all eternity.

Shortly after the reunion Mom started showing symptoms of Covid, this was a bad bad Delima. With asymptomatic Parkinsons, one of the leading causes of death ends up being pneumonia. We were worried sick from the moment her covid test came back positive. We did everything we could to give her the best care we knew possible.

About 10 days later she ended up in urgent care, after X-rays and because of her underlying health conditions they sent her to the Emergency Room at the nearest Hospital. Thankfully she was able to leave the hospital that night and return home with an oxygen tank to help her in her recovery.

A few days after mom found out she had Covid my dad started showing symptoms of covid himself. We begged him to take it easy but to no avail, he was out working in the fields brush-hogging and working as if he wasn’t sick at all. But he was and continued to get worse as the days went on.

I had never seen my dad so sick in my whole life. He had always been strong, a man who loved adventure and was always looking for his next hiking place or planning a future backpacking trip. In fact, after going for a run with him a few days before he got sick on the Frisco trail in Willard he had told me that he had a goal to run a full marathon in the fall. Yes, he had gotten colds before, or maybe even a stomach bug here and there but he had never been as sick as he was while he had covid.

One morning I came to his house to check on him and mom, I came to give my sister Lisa a little break because she had been caring for both of them day in and day out since they had gotten sick. Dad told me to grab a chair and sit by him and talk to him, he asked me to take notes about some of his future plans, and he talked about his company and some other personal things. He was very serious and wanted to make sure he had everything in line in case something were to happen to him, I reminded him that he would be just fine and that we didn’t need to talk about these things right now but that he should instead rest and let me take care of him. Needless to say, he pushed through and told me that I needed to write down what he was telling me, so I did.

The next day my Sister Lisa was extremely worried about him he was not getting any better and was increasingly getting weaker and weaker, she told my brothers they needed to come and take him to the hospital where he could get better care, so they did. Dad could not even walk to the car to drive to the hospital he was so weak and sick, that my brothers had to almost carry him to get into the car to then be able to transport him there. He was admitted that night, little did any of us know at that time we would never get to hear him speak to us in person again on this earth.

His experience in the hospital was a rough one, he would call and Facetime us and show and tell us how awful it was. He told us how well the nurses were taking care of him but made sure we knew the food was awful and the amenities were less than ideal. He was determined to make it out of that hospital as fast as he could. He practiced his breathing exercises and tried to do all the things he was told to have the outcome we all were hoping for a quick recovery.

Sadly his situation only worsened. there must have been a thousand or more people praying and fasting for his recovery to become a reality. We had the faith that he would be healed, we knew by some miracle it would happen. If it could happen to so many people in the scriptures then why not to our Father?

After a negative turn of events, I was there by his bed when his heart took its last beat. I witnessed all the lines on the monitors go flat and lifeless. I was there when the nurse came in and pronounced him officially dead. If I hadn’t been there I’m not sure I would have believed it were true, that he wasn’t going to be healed in the flesh, that he wasn’t coming home with us from the hospital. I felt If I just prayed a little harder he would come back to life as Lazarus had. I was wrong and my daddy left his mortal body that day to join his mom and all his other family and friends who had previously passed on in the sprit world.

I wasn’t happy that the miracle I wanted so badly to come to pass hadn’t.

I was devastated, we all were.

How could it be that our father was gone? That he would never meet us at Brahms again for a quick lunch break during his work day. That he would never take our kids fishing or caving ever again. That he would leave his boots and spurs behind that he wore while he was learning to rope steers in his arena. That his truck would sit forever in its place smelling like leather and dirt in his driveway. How could it be that the pile of books he loved and read would sit on his nightstand never to be touched by him again? Or his office chair at work would sit there empty without another turn by him to be made. How could it be that I would never get to hear another cheesy joke or him poke at my belly and give me a solid side hug? I would never hear him laugh as he tickled my kids so hard they would giggle and scream simultaneously. I would never see him again on his back patio sitting in the chair soaking up the sun, as it reflected off his hairless ghostly white legs.

He was gone and there was nothing we could do to bring him back.

NOTHING…

A year ago tomorrow. we all gathered in the Chapel of our church building to witness the baptism of my sweet niece Shailee. She had asked all of the cousins, all 30 of them to sing “Peace in Christ”. So they did. I sat near the middle of the Chapel next to my husband, and my mom and dad were near the front. As the children started singing the song, “There is peace in Christ when we learn of HIm, through the streets of Galilee to Jerusalem, listen to his words, let them come alive, when we see Him as he is, there is peace in Christ, He gives us hope when hope is gone, he gives us strength when we can’t go on, he gives us shelter from the storms of life, When there’s no peace on earth there is peace in Christ,” my dad burst into to tears, I could only see him from the back, I could see him wiping his eyes, and nose repeatedly and his whole upper body was trembling with movement from his sobs.

And watching him brought all of us to tears.

The words of the song were precisely the words of comfort we needed to hear that day, after learning of my mom’s diagnoses only a few days prior, we all, including my dad, so badly needed that peace.

In a year from now…

As I stand here gazing at these pictures that were taken just exactly 1 year ago I find myself feeling all the many past feelings that accompanied this last year, they come flooding back like a damn that had been destroyed. I tried to stop them but it was useless, and I am helpless.

I feel the exhaustion from a hard long move,

sadness from the news of potentially losing our mother to the awful, debilitating disease,

and admittedly I even am feeling surges of betrayal because Dad wasn’t saved the way we wanted him to be.

And after all of those, the last feeling I am feeling catches me a little off guard, it is a feeling that triggers hope and love, a feeling that ignites faith and perseverance.

The feeling I feel now FINALLY is PEACE!

Overwhelming peace, realizing once again that Christ came through for ME, for US every step of the way this last year.

The words of the song, “Peace in Christ”, still echo in my head, and I cling to them on days like today. I cling to them because I have been a witness to Christ’s neverending, undeniable peace that he offers us through his atonement.

The peace that reassures me that my Dad’s spirit still lives, that he is more present than I can even begin to imagine.

The peace that reminds me that right before Dad got sick, he had given my mom a blessing, praying that she would be healed, and since then she has been. Her neurologist even assured us that it was nothing short of a miracle that her symptoms of asymptomatic Parkinson’s have almost completely diminished and that she now has regular Parkinson’s and she can continue to live with it most likely until very old age.

Thinking about a year from now I wonder what new lessons of life I will have learned.

I pray I will look back in a year and without a doubt continue to be able to exclaim,

“Yes, I still KNOW without a doubt there is PEACE in CHRIST when I turn to Him!”.