When Daddy walked in the kitchen door about 8:30 o'clock that evening the children ran to greet him with questions, " How is Mommie?" And "When is she coming home?" Their Grandmother Brickner was still there, and she knew what had already taken place. She, and Fran's sister Barbara went into another room and left her brave young son with this hardest of all tasks, because she knew this was the way he wanted it.

So when they asked when Mommie was coming home, he simply answered, "Mommie is not coming home. She has gone on a long trip, and she is going to live with God." The youngest of the girls said, " I want my Mommie. I don't want my Mommie to die." The youngest of the boys asked, " Is Mom at the funeral home? Can we see her? " Their father asked them, " Don't you want to remember Mommie like she always was? " When they all agreed they did, he promised they could all go to the funeral home and that Mommie's body would be in the pretty casket, but her soul was truly in Heaven with God.

There would be pretty flowers for Mommie and all of her friends and relatives would be there for them to talk to, but the casket would be closed.

The older children bowed their heads in sorrow, and the younger ones ran crying into the living room for comfort from Grandmother Brickner.

The foster son, Mike Prenzlin, said, "I knew Aunt Rose was sick enough to be transferred from one hospital to another, but I never dreamed that she was sick enough to die." By this time, the Cleveland doctor phoned a pathological diagnosis to our local physician, stating that with all of her other problems Rose had a very malignant type of cancer embedded in the stomach tissue and this did not show up on X ray.

So this brave young woman died, not knowing she had cancer and that indeed she was not losing her mind at all! All of the pains she suffered truly were real.

Back? She has not gone but that one step which takes the faithful soul from the arms of those it loved on earth into the grateful arms of Christ.

For such as she, there is no death.

But for her two parents there is surely no truer evidence of faith than the yielding up to God of a beloved child. It is the repeated sacrifice of Abraham offering up Isaac. And we knew that God was lifting our souls to heights that we might never again scale until a hoped-for reunion in His presence.

(End of Chapter 5)