"It's Poo Poo, Emily! Now Go to Sleep!"

My wonderful, round, Italian grandmother, Clara Ida Maricelli, died last Thursday. She was 80 years old, and I already miss her terribly.

To my regular blog readers (all three of them :-) ), I apologize if the posts have been somewhat depressing the past few days, but there are seasons of life that are just like that. With Jesus, they're really not so bad though! But, in honor of my Meemaw, I have to tell a story.

To set the stage, for those of you who have not had the honor of meeting Meemaw, she was born and raised in Italy, met my grandfather when he was stationed there during the war, fell in love, and sailed to the States a couple of years later after he proposed in a letter. She learned English by watching television, and has always had a very thick, very beautiful Italian accent...

When I was little, I was spending the night at her house one night, but kept getting out of bed after she told me not to. (I was kind of a brat back then). She was trying to eat a bowl of chocolate ice cream, so she had to keep hiding it every time I sauntered down the hall and into the living room in my frilly pink nightgown. Finally, I caught her. "Meemaw," I asked in the sweetest, most innocent sounding voice I could muster. "What's that?"

Frustrated with my brattiness, she exclaimed (remember the Italian accent here), "It's-a poo poo, Emily! Now go to sleep-a!!"

For some reason, this story has stuck with my family for over twenty years. We tell it and retell it, every time looking to Meemaw for the punch line just so we can hear that wonderful accent again. We all try to imitate it, and a few come pretty close, but no one says it quite like her.

I've been thinking about those words a lot over the past week as she lay in the hospital teetering between life and death. "It's poo poo, Emily! Now go to sleep!" Though she was never an overly religious woman, I realized that there's some Truth to her famous line. In fact, it's the perfect phrase for someone in their last moments of life. "It's poo poo, Meemaw. Now go to sleep." This world, it's nothing. It's temporal. It's fleeting. It's a mere shadow of what's to come. It reminds me of the Caedmon's Call song that says, "This world has nothing for me, and this world has everything." It's true. It's all poo poo! So, please, be at peace and go to eternal sleep. Let go. Rest in Him. In Christ, and Christ alone, we can see the world for what it is (and isn't) and go to sleep in peace, knowing that the best is yet to come.

Here is a link to a video in which my Meemaw says her famous line. (The video is kind of dark, so you can't see much, but it's really her voice that matters anyway. It's only a minute or so long. My cousin took it when she was in town and was trying to get Meemaw on tape saying hi to her friends back in Michigan. Thank you, Brandi! I love it that you have this recorded!!)

Next, here is a picture of Meemaw and her kids (all ten of them!) that was taken in January when everyone was down for her 80th birthday party. How awesome is it that we all got to be together one last time for such a great celebration of life!

And speaking of life, I realized another spiritual truth that my Meemaw taught me without even knowing it. I remember the first time I took Gideon to her house so she could see my little boy. He was still a baby, and she held him and snuggled with him and buried him in her huge, soft, Italian bosom oohing and awing over him like he was the first baby she had ever held. I remember thinking, "Meemaw, it's not like you've never held a baby before! You have ten kids and 25 grandkids..." But still, she held him like he was the only one.

I know if you talked to any of my aunts or cousins, they'd say she held their babies in the same way. Even with so many kids in her life, each one was special and unique.

That's just how God sees us. Each of His children is unique and special, and He holds us and cares for us as if we were the only one.



Here is Meemaw with my dad, me, and Gideon - three babies she held and snuggled with at one time or another. Four generations captured in one picture. Thank you, Meemaw, for being you.

And, just for fun, there is a house on the way to Meemaw's that always has peacocks (of all things) roaming around the front yard. Here are some random pictures of one of them that we took on the way home from the funeral...


Seriously, who has peacocks in their front yards???