Reflection

Matt and I attended the funeral of Mary Jo, the original director of Stepping Stone, Kellen's daycare, today. She was diagnosed with cancer only this past August and passed away on Saturday. Her husband made several poignant comments during the ceremony, to the effect that even if he had the power to bring her back, it would only be selfish to do it, because she's so much better off now...with Jesus and in no pain, and somewhere so perfect that our minds can't even begin to dream or comprehend it. I pray for her family and those closest to her for what they're going through, as I know that I'm still reeling with the shock of it all, as she didn't want anyone (or at least many people) to know about the cancer while she was going through, as she firmly believed that she was going to receive healing until right up until the very end. Her husband also made another point...she now has that healing, just in a different way than she had expected to receive it and they had prayed for it. Anyway, my shock comes from only finding out about her cancer toward the beginning of last week...so everything seems to have gone at such a high rate of speed because I barely had time to comprehend her cancer diagnosis and let that sink in when Matt told me yesterday that they'd posted a sign at daycare that she'd died.

She made Matt and I feel so at ease about our choice of day care centers...any concern that we had was promptly addressed, even something that could be considered trivial. I remember when Kellen was moving to an older classroom and the teachers weren't able to feed him breakfast any longer...he was having to feed himself "big boy" food. I was stumped as to what I was supposed to fix for him (I know this seems really stupid, but I really was stumped...we had been on baby food and mixed cereal for so long and my brain was trying to wrap around the idea of Kellen feeding himself mixed cereal...umm..how 'bout NO, but I hadn't transitioned my brain to him eating other foods). Mary Jo just giggled in a nondemeaning way, and suggested that other parents found it useful to make scrambled eggs, or big batches of pancakes, waffles, etc., and made lots of suggestions for healthy breakfasts that were age appropriate and that wouldn't take all morning to make. Thus I became known as Kellen's mom, the one who brings scrambled eggs and pancakes every morning, for the next at least 6 months (ok, so it was longer than that..but he LOVES them!). Anyway...I don't have any idea of how many kids there actually are at that daycare, but within days she knew our names, which kid we belonged with, and our family situation (Matt's work schedule craziness), etc., and I imagine she did that for every single family at that day care, plus every other day care she oversaw, since she was the area director in addition to the College Station director when we first began there. She was an amazing woman, and I'm so glad that she's no longer in any pain...