Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2008

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad

Today is my parents 47th Wedding Anniversary! I am so sad that my husband and I cannot be in Lubbock to celebrate this special event. We did have a beautiful party for them on their 45th anniversary back home and that was so much fun. We got to visit with relatives and friends that we had not seen for a very long time. My parents are very special to me as they set the standard for us kids on the longevity of marriage. It's not always pretty but when you hold on to what God put together and make those vows work and I mean really work....then you have a gift beyond compare.

I cannot imagine what life would have been like without either one of them. We are so honored, Cyndi, Joey, Laurie and I, to have had the Lord bless us that way. I couldn't even begin to tell you about my parents. My childhood was one long journey into happiness. As I grew up, I realized that even when bad things happened to me, I still was able to go on as long as I prayed and thanked Him, for the life he gave me. My parents, Joe and Rosa, always put us first. We had everything and then some. We weren't spoiled but when our mother took us to the grocery store and let us each have our own box of cereal (because we four liked different kinds) then I began to think that maybe it was a little bit like being spoiled. Mom sewed, she took us on outings, put me and Cyndi in Lubbock Civic Ballet where we danced for years. All of us were Girl Scouts. My sister Laurie tapped her little toe shoes and did gymnastic at Billie Jo's Dance School where she became extremely talented at being like Nadia Comaneci. My brother played golf with my father and when I met my husband through my brother (both were lettermen on the Lubbock High School Golf team) I knew that it would make for one big happy family. 

I could go on and on but for me the defining moment of them as parents was on June 19th 2007. I was scheduled for a corneal transplant on my right eye at eight that morning. I have an eye disease calledKeratoconus that affected both eyes. It was not diagnosed until I turned eighteen. I had always suffered poor vision and when I got to high school, it was pretty bad. I never wanted my parents to know how bad it was so I became reclusive in some ways. I hid in my bedroom, read (which was becoming more difficult as the years went by) and pretty much became a night owl since light always seemed to give me a dull pain in both eyes. After being diagnosed, I wore rigid contacts to have better vision but in 1992, I was scheduled to have a transplant and I chickened out! I can't explain it but there it is. I didn't happen. 

Cut to 2003. We moved from Lubbock to San Antonio and I noticed my eyes were suffering terribly. By 2006 I was suffering so much eye pain and my eyes were making so much matter that it was uncontrollable. My aunt Alicia and uncle Bob referred me to their opthomalogist and I went to see him. He discovered that I had rosacea and it had made itself at home over my eyes and underneath the upper eye lid. It was so severe and I cannot describe the pain. I just almost gave up.......... My new doctor told me that he wanted to refer me to one of the best corneal transplant doctors in the U.S. and that since the cornea was so severly deteriorated, that this new doctor he had in mind was renowned for handling last hope cases. I went. He cast out the infection in my eyes. In early April I went on FMLA and waited out the storm. We medicated the eye from March until June. I was ready he said. June 19th was the day he ordered. My parents arrived. I was scared but more frightened by the fact that if I did not do this I could have a repeat of the three months of torture that I went through for this day. 

............after the surgery was done, I can honestly tell you that I felt no pain. We drove home and my husband Marshall went to Sam's to get my Vicodin and ran into friends while he was there. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Deanna is starting to feel some pain. Then more, more.....PAIN!!!!!! I started screaming, crying and shaking. My parents went into action. Ice packs and lots of Tylenol because my husband was not answering his cell..or he may have even forgotten his phone..I don't remember. He finally came home and boy did he come home to a house of mania. I was screaming because it felt like someone had shot me in the eye and I swear I would feel the bullet hole out the back of my head. My father made Marshall call the doctor and even though he had told us many times prior that "you will feel fine after the surgery but you will have intense to severe pain an hour or so after. It will go way. That is what the Vicodin is for". I took them. My parents held me as I screamed and shook in pain for three hours. Finally my body could take no more and I guess that wonderful pain killer worked it's magic because my parents tell me that I passed out and fell asleep. 

That is what I will never forget. My parents held me for three hours in their arms while I went through my pain. That they together knew, that their eldest daughter, a daughter in her forties, needed her mommy and daddy. I will never be able to thank the Lord properly for that. It makes me hurt inside as well because I have loved ones that have lost one or both of their parents and that is a reality that so real for me as my own husband has lost both of his parents. He was their only child. They had him late in life. Marshall's daddy Amos, was 54 and his mother Willa, was 43 when they had him in 1966. Amos passed away in 1986 and my mother in-law in 1996. He just has us. He considers my parents his parents, my brother and sisters his siblings. I am blessed to have all of them in my life. I always wanted to be a mom like my own mother but that was not the path the Lord wanted us to go in. I've accepted that. Instead, I sing about the blessings he has provided my family with daily. The strong bond of family that is held together by those golden rings around their fingers and the vows they took in front of God. That we would be a family undivided. Happy Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad. I love you both dearly. You are the best.