I haven't written for a while. So much has happened in my life and I get so caught up in it that I forget to write. Please pardon my slothfulness. Two months ago, February 17th, my husband and I lost our middle child, our son, Patrick Alen. He had been gone from us for twelve years, no phone calls, no letters, nothing. Of course I prayed for him and his safety every night. I thought a lot about him and his lifestyle as I did my housework. I wondered where he was and if he was well, if he was warm, had enough to eat and a place to sleep. He chose the way he lived his life, I told myself. It didn't make me feel any better to think that way, so I continued to pray for him. The spirit urged me to pray differently for him. So, I began to pray that he would meet up with a good, spiritual man or woman who would talk to him about the Lord and eventually bring him back to being a real believer again. I prayed this prayer for years, believing that it would eventually happen, that God was going to answer my prayers.

One day I got an e-mail from our daughter. She said a black man sent her a message on Facebook to give him a call. It was about her brother, Patrick. She did not want to talk to him so she gave me his phone number. I told my husband about it but he was not ready to go back into the heartwrenching things we had endured the last time he had been to see us. So, I waited. The next day our son's former girlfriend e-mailed our daughter and she called and told me about it. She said his friend told her that our son had died and that we should call Mr. Water's.

My insides did all kinds of flip-flops as my head tried to take in the news of  our son's death. As I told my husband the news, I felt like I was moving in a dream. I felt like my whole system was on molasses mode. I could not believe our son was really gone forever, that we would never see him alive again, hold his hand or kiss him.

I called Mr. Waters and talked to him. He told me our son had lived with him in his "half-way house" and he was Patrick's care-giver. He said the first year there our son had been cocky and a little belligerent. Mr. Waters worked with him, even talking to him about God. He said Patrick said he didn't believe there was a God. Mr. Waters didn't give up on him.

One day about a year or so after he came to live with him, Mr. Waters heard someone throwing up in the bathroom. He went to see what was the matter. He asked Patrick if the blood on the side of the toilet was from him and he said, "No." "Patrick," he said, "I know it is from you. No one else has been sick lately. Get yourself ready. I'm taking you to the hospital." And he did. The doctors gave him a lot of tests and I guess Patrick was given the results of those tests.

Mr. Waters told me that Patrick had very bad kidneys, scerosis of the liver, and a very weak heart. He was finally faced with his own mortality. Mr. Waters told me he continued to talk to Patrick about his vices; smoking, drinking and drugs. He told him they were going to kill him if he didn't stop. Slowly Patrick began to realize that he was going to see the end of his life. He didn't want to spend his last days being sick all the time. He did stop smoking, drinking and drugs during the time he lived with Mr. Waters.

While at the "House," Patrick learned what a true Christian was. He watched as Mr. Waters conducted a weekly Bible study in his home. Some of it must have rubbed off on Patrick because during that time he began to see the error of his ways and he listened more intently during the Bible studies. I asked Mr. Waters one burning question that I could not hold back. "Was our son a Christian before he died?"

"I can't answer that but I know he did begin to believe in God before he died."

All the breath went out of me for a few seconds. Tears stung my eyes and I tearfully told Mr. Waters, "That's what I wanted to hear. If he was a Christian when he passed away, then all these years of wondering about him and where he was is worth all the anguish we felt over him." A big, heavy load had been lifted from my soul. I had to, no, I wanted to believe that our son was in heaven with Jesus. It lessened the deep hurt I had carried all these years of not knowing if he was alive or dead. My husband and I had felt in our hearts that a policeman was going to knock on our door and tell us that our son was found dead in an alley somewhere. Now we could put that fear to rest.

After that conversation with Mr. Waters, he gave us some information on where Patrick was and some important phone numbers. I thanked him from the bottom of my heart for taking care of our son and he told me he was glad to do it. He also surprised me when he told me that Patrick was a pleasant, happy man, always laughing and making others laugh. He said Patrick had a lot of close friends. All of this made me glad that it was Mr. Waters who had taken care our son for the five years he lived at the "House." He made the difference in Patrick's life. He brought him back to Christ. I wept for joy, pain at losing a son, and relief that he was with God now, forever being taken care of by the Father of us all.

The rest of the day was a whirlwind of activity for me. I called the hospital he died in, Bon Secors, and learned he had died two days ago and that if his body wasn't claimed by the end of that day, it was go to the State and then we'd have to pay to reclaim it. The thought struck me that we didn't have a burial plot or anything prepared for this time of sorrow. I discussed it with my husband and we decided to have his body cremated and his ashes put into an urn for burial with one us "someday."

Long story short---we made arrangements for a crematorium to pick up his body and cremate it as soon as possible. My husband and I drove to the funeral home-crematorium and signed all the papers, paid for the cremation and then, after all was taken care of, the director brought Patrick up from the morgue and let us take one last look at our son.

Our daughter, Marie and her husband, Tom, had come with us and so the four of us stepped into the outer room where Patrick was laying on the table in the body bag, unzipped to show his head from the neck up. His hair had been cut close, his beard and mustash trimmed neatly. We slowly walked to where he lay, so cold and still. I couldn't help but notice how his cheeks were filled out. He didn't look gaunt and eyes haunted as when we last saw him. He had deep pink on the lobes of his ears and his skin was a natural color, not grey as is usual in death. He actually looked healthy. I could not keep my eyes off of his features. I had to remember his face for the rest of my life because I truly would not see him again.

Both my daughter and myself could not help the wellspring of tears that flowed so freely. When I could compose myself, I went close to his table and whispered that I loved him and told him to rest in peace with the Lord. Then I kissed his forehead and whispered "goodbye" in a broken voice. Marie told him "goodbye" also and we turned and walked away into our husbands arms.

It was four days later that Charles and I drove back to the crematorium and picked up our son's ashes. We bought a beautiful blue urn with three white doves flying on the side. The name of it was "Going Home." It fit perfectly. The ashes were transferred into the urn and placed in a box for easier carrying. And that is where my devotional, "A Mother's Pain" originated. Tomorrow I will enter that in my blog. Until then, God bless whoever is reading this.