SIT WHERE I CAN SEE YOU...

I was a cheerleader way back in the olden days when being a cheerleader meant you shook your paper pom poms more than any other body part. I wasn't particularly qualified for the job, except for my superior vocal chords (which saved the Borger Independent School system a significant amount of money on megaphones). I had absolutely no gymnastic skills beyond landing a cartwheel. I tried. Truth is, I was born with a design flaw that prohibits me from ever being - how you say it - aerodynamically gifted. I mean, really... have you seen my butt? I jump like a ten-month old toddler. My total ground clearance is maybe three inches, max.

But then... along came the mini-trampoline. Just one bounce on that sucker and I was flying through the air like a Bulldog Ninja! Practically overnight I became a spread eagle-ing / toe-touching / pike and herkie jumping fool of a rah-rah.

Shortly after I achieved airborne mastery, my Aunt Betty Bob came from Odessa to watch me cheer. “Be sure to sit where I can see you!” I asked her, excitedly.

Unfortunately, my Aunt got to the game too late to get a front row seat in the bleachers. She ended up behind a bunch of tall, adolescent basketball players with pimples on their necks and was only able to catch intermittent glimpses of me and my red and white saddle oxfords.

Until...

We dragged out the Magic Mini-Tramp.

Suddenly my Aunt Betty Bob was was ooooohing and ahhhhhhing in utter amazement at my flying gymnastic abilities.

From her obstructed vantage point, she couldn't see the trampoline. All she saw was me flying through the air like a freaking Wallenda.

Man, was she impressed! So much so that I never felt the need to tell her the truth about my amazing power of bounce.

His senior year of high school, my boyfriend Dickie was concerned about a buddy of his who would not be able to graduate with his class unless he passed a major exam. When test day came, Dickie asked his friend, Joe, to sit close to the classroom door. “Sit where I can see you.” were his instructions. All throughout the two hour test, Dickie would periodically walk by Joe's classroom and stand in the hall just long enough for Joe to notice. Whenever Joe looked up, Dickie would give him a big ol' smile and an encouraging fist pump.

Joe passed his test and proudly took his place with the Class of '74.

Last week, we got a call from Dickie's cousin, LaDonna, telling us that her Mom had been put on a ventilator for a few days to give her lungs a rest from the acute trauma of pneumonia. We hurried over to the hospital to sit with Aunt Mattie until LaDonna and her husband could make the five hour drive to Borger.

As we sat by her bed, matching our breathing to the ventilator and praying healing prayers with each breath, Dickie got a call from one of his close friends whose Dad had just died in Hospice care. He needed Dickie to be with him at that first onslaught of grief. And he wanted Dickie to handle the funeral.

“What do I do?” Dickie asked. “I need to be two places at once!”

“You go to the one who needs you most. Go be with your friend. I will stay with Aunt Mattie. I'll sit right here where she can see me, just in case she opens her eyes.

A few days later I was rolling the lint roller over my handsome Dick in his pretty black suit. (I am an extremely thorough lint roller. Just ask him.)

“I'm gonna have to leave the funeral a bit early, so I'll find a seat in the back.” I told him as I rolled all traces of lint away.

Okay. But... please make sure you sit where I can see you. Seeing your face always helps me get through it.”

And I did. I sat in the back of the chapel and never broke eye contact with my Dickman. Anytime he looked my way, I made sure to smile or nod. I willed him strength and asked God to give him all the words he needed to comfort a grieving son.

We hoped and prayed that Aunt Mattie would recover, that her fragile, broken heart would find a supernatural strength and survive the downward physical spiral. But it was not to be.

LaDonna called her family to the hospital, knowing it was time to relieve sweet Mattie from all the tubes and lines and needles that had been running in and out of her for a week. Her battered little body had grown tired of fighting.

We gathered together in the small hospital room and circled around the bed of that pocket-sized warrior of a woman. Listening to the mechanical sounds and beeping alarms, I felt she surely must already be on her way to that Better Place.

We held hands and we prayed and told stories and sang and cried as Aunt Mattie breathed her final earthly breaths. And when it was done, there was a collective spirit of peace, knowing she was in the arms of a beautiful, blond shining angel of a granddaughter who had been waiting to greet her.

(Undoubtedly, Uncle Harold was pulling in a big 'ol catfish and would catch up with her soon.)

These are hard days for my generation. Slowly but surely... and oh so sadly, we are losing that precious layer of loved ones who stood in the gap between us and heaven. I'd like to think they will always be around, guiding us, praying over us, wondering why we aren't wearing a coat when it's so cold outside.

I know for sure I will see all those beloved faces again, someday.

Until then... I'm going to do the best I can to live my life as heroically and fearlessly as did our parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles who have gone before us.

Most of all, I'm just gonna sit down here... sit where they can see me, and try to do them proud as they sit on the front row of those shiny golden bleachers, encouraging me with fist pumps and smiles from heaven.