A light in the dark

𝐼’𝑣𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑎𝑛𝑑 f𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑠𝑖𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑟f𝑎𝑐𝑒. 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑎𝑠 𝐼’𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑃𝑠𝑎𝑙𝑚 23 𝑎𝑛𝑑 J𝑜ℎ𝑛 10 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 f𝑒𝑤 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑡ℎ𝑠, 𝐼 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑖z𝑒𝑑 𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑛𝑢𝑑𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛, 𝑛𝑜𝑡 j𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑦, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑎𝑠 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡 𝑜f 𝑚𝑦 𝑡𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑦. 𝑆𝑜 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠.

In December of 2020, our family walked through the kind of valley you never forget. Within the span of a few weeks, both of my grandmothers, Mim and Mammaw, contracted COVID. I still remember the two calls that came just days apart, the same cold wave sweeping over me each time. I hadn’t hugged either of them since before the pandemic began, and we are a very huggy family. Everything in me just wanted to embrace them. But I couldn’t.

Mim entered the Kingwood Hospital on December 3, the same day my mom rang the bell for beating cancer for the first time. I was able to talk to her 2 days before she died on December 13, and for that I’m forever grateful. My uncle, who had already recovered from COVID-19, was allowed to be in the room with her the day before she passed away, and all her children were able to be on the phone with her even though she couldn’t communicate at that point; something I will always see as God’s mercy.

Two days prior, on December 11, we learned that Mammaw had also contracted COVID-19. Over the following weeks, the hospital staff were incredible about helping her FaceTime my mom and her siblings. COVID shut the doors to visitors, but it couldn’t shut out love or prayer. Her children were on FaceTime when she passed away on December 30. That, too, was a gift.

I was angry. Bitter. Heartbroken. And the most challenging part wasn’t losing them, it was not being able to grieve as a family. Both funerals had to be outside because COVID was still a thing. On top of that, different family members had compromised immune systems, including my mom, who had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer earlier in 2020. We stood apart when everything inside us longed to collapse into each other. It felt like mourning scattered into pieces, like we had to carry grief without relief.

My parents…they amaze me. They’ve been together since 1975, and in less than a month, they lost both of their mothers. They carried every logistical burden while grieving, all while my dad tried to keep my mom safe through cancer treatments. Watching him care for her during that season raised the bar on what devotion really looks like. Their love is covenant-level love.

But even in all of that darkness, God gave us light.

One day, while Mammaw was having a difficult time, she was on a video call with my mom and her other children. Out of nowhere, she told them about a dream she’d had the night before. She said she saw angels surrounding her. And then, at the end of a long, bright hallway, she saw Bessie (Mim). And Mim was saying, “Come on, Bonnie, come on, Bonnie.”

Here is the part that still gives me chills:
She didn’t know Mim had died.
She didn’t even know Mim had Covid.

People can say dreams are random, or delirium, or the mind trying to cope. I don’t buy any of that in this instance. Everything in me knows it wasn’t a dream - it was God. Those two women were more than in-laws. They shared decades of life, love, holidays, kids, and grandkids. And I believe Mim came, one last time, to check on Mammaw. To tell her, “It’s okay. I’m here.”

After describing the dream, Mammaw began singing a song from her childhood, a song none of us had ever heard before. She couldn’t remember the title, just the lyrics. My mom and aunt searched and found it.

The song was called “Little Bessie.”
Bessie…Mim’s real name.
That was God showing off, not subtly, but tenderly.

As I’ve researched this old 1870s song, I’ve learned it’s more than a ballad. It’s a spiritual meditation on death, innocence, and the nearness of heaven. Families in the 19th century lived close to mortality. From their grief grew a theology of consolation, the belief that heaven wasn’t far away, that death was a doorway home.

Even the song’s imagery mirrors Scripture (the same verses I’ve been studying the last two months):
John 10: the Shepherd who calls His sheep by name.
Psalm 23: comfort in the valley, arms that guide, goodness that follows.
Reading the lyrics with that lens…I now understand why God sent that song to Mammaw. The song begins with a poignant portrayal of human frailty, “I feel so strange tonight…something hurts me here…”, evoking an awareness of our limits and a longing for comfort. Then it shifts, not toward fear, but to revelation:

A window opens.
Light pours in.
Children sing.
The Shepherd speaks.
The invitation is gentle, personal, and full of love.

And the closing lines, where a mother’s breaking heart holds the child who is entering eternal rest, capture that sacred intersection where grief and grace meet in the same breath. And in this case, not where a child leaves her mother’s arms, but where a mother leaves her children’s arms.

Death is not the Shepherd’s absence; it is His nearness.
It is the moment faith becomes sight.
It is the arms of Christ completing the love that began in the arms of a mother.
And then the wildest thing happened.

After digging through versions of the song, I wanted to find the original 1870s sheet music because that made more sense as to which version of the song Mammaw would’ve sung as a child. After running into multiple roadblocks with Google, I turned to ChatGPT, which suggested contacting the Ohioana Library Association as the best chance of finding the source. I emailed on a Saturday, thinking I might hear back in a month, or not at all. They wrote back Monday morning, with the scanned sheet music from 1872.

Everything just kept falling into place.

And I realized I needed one more thing: I needed to hear it played. I asked Sandy Farris if she could play it for me, and of course, she did. She found the right tone and feel, and then recorded it. It is beautifully haunting - like heaven leaking into sound.

I have no doubt God orchestrated all of this.
The timing.
The dream.
The song.
The Scripture.
The rediscovery.
The music.
The comfort.

And even now, in 2025, as I’m studying John 10 and Psalm 23, God brings this song back to me. The shepherd imagery. The light. The calling by name. The doorway into rest.

It’s as if He’s whispering:
𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛.
𝐼 𝑎𝑚 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑤.
𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑒.

And neither were they.
I still cry when I tell this story, but not tears of sorrow anymore.
Tears of awe.
Tears of peace.
Tears of gratitude that my grandmothers, strong, stubborn, loving women, still had each other’s backs… right up to the end.

Even in one of the darkest months of my life, heaven opened a window. And light came through.
It’s taken me five years to get to a place of healing. For a long time, I couldn’t even begin to process what happened, much less sit still long enough to untangle the grief I had stuffed into every available corner just to survive. I didn’t have the margin, the strength, or the clarity then. But now, at the right time, in the right season, with the right tools, God has opened a space in my heart to finally look back without drowning. And for the first time since 2020, I feel something I never thought I’d associate with these memories: healing. Not forgetting, not minimizing, but healing. A gentle mending. A breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. And I’m grateful, so deeply grateful, that God waited until my heart was ready.