By Madison Sabados 
When your mama goes to be with Jesus, time will stop. Completely. It will seem as if the world has completely stopped turning. It will bring you back to a state of childhood, no matter your age. You will long to be that little girl, that teenager who still had her mama. You bargain, you’ll do anything to go back in time just to have her again.
Immediately it feels as if you are already forgetting her. You are forgetting the way she laughs, you know those deep laughs where she is so beside herself that she can’t catch her breath. You feel as if you are forgetting all of your memories together. You try to piece together memories in your mind and you do everything you can to hold on to them and remember every single detail because that’s all you have left now— memories.
You have to remind yourself that you aren’t going crazy. Your body is in shock. You are getting ready to go through all those stages of grief they tell you about. You are angry because you weren’t ready. You were not ready for that to be the end of all the memories. You wanted more time. You should have more time. None of it is fair.
You are going to bargain, practically beg God to send her back to you. You tell Him you will do anything to just have her back and see her smile one more time. But you know you can’t have her back, and that is the worst part.
You are going to be in complete denial. How could I be losing my mama? This can’t be real. You want to wake up from this awful dream, but you can’t because this isn’t a dream. It is real life.
You are going to be depressed. You are going to feel like there won’t ever be another good day and there will never be another day where the pain isn’t unbearable. But there will be, just hold on.
Acceptance, it’s a hard stage to come by. It’s hard to accept that the person who gave you life . . . is gone. It is so hard to accept that you can’t pick up the phone to call her when something good happens or when you need to cry. The worst part of this stage is that no matter how you swing it, she isn’t coming back.
One thing you can take comfort in is knowing that she loved you, and that one day when you get to meet Jesus, she will be there waiting for you with that laugh she always had and open arms waiting to hold you again. So just hold on, you will see her again.
by Jessica Tyler 
by Nikki Pennington 
