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The Importance of Memorializing…

Margaret Messner has a pavestone in the Sanctuary Garden at Hospice & Community Care dedicated to her mother. “I try to visit my mother’s stone on my her birthday in September, and I always come on her death date because it reminds me about the promise and vow we had made a long time ago before she had Alzheimer’s and before she got sick.”
“If you read my Facebook post, my mother gave me a leather-bound book Jesus Calling,” explained Margaret. “My best friend knew that on the last day my mother was at the Wayne T. Patrick Hospice House, there was a Hydrangea bush outside her room. Hydrangeas were always her favorite flowers. There was one little bloom that stayed blooming until the day she died. All the other flowers were brown, but this flower hung on until she passed. My dad died November 17th, and my friend had taken his favorite flower and mine, a yellow rose, and pressed it and put it on his death date. She pressed a hydrangea and placed it on the page of my Mother’s death date, and then placed more yellow rose petals on my birthdate.”
“Last month, I brought flowers, including yellow roses, and my book to the garden on my mother’s death date. I like to sit with her and talk. This year, while I was there, another family came out, and I spoke with the younger daughter, who looked to be my age. I hugged her and told her I knew her pain, but that this was a wonderful place. That was my day this year, on the day my mother died, another family has to experience their own loss.”
“It’s nice to be able to sit and be close and reflect on all the wonderful things she did. Best friend and mother, she was a classic Southern lady who taught me to cook, to be a good mother, a good wife, and have good values and morals. She taught me to be a good Christian who always strives for the best in life,” said Margaret
“I lost my sister eight years ago, and I lost my dad in November six years ago, and my mother three years ago. I don’t have any family left. My sister was cremated, and I don’t have a place to go to see her. I love my mother’s pavestone. I like to sit right by it and touch her name. I ask for advice and wisdom. Her grave is in Beaufort, so it is nice to have a place close to me to feel her presence and talk with her. I asked my children, whether I am at Hospice & Community Care or not, to please put me there because it is amazing. I want to have a stone close to my mom’s stone. My husband Mike and our children, Son and Charlotte (the M, M, S C on her paver are our initials), as well as my sister and father, miss her every day.”

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