the phone call you never want to get

"Aunt Denise is gone." WHAT?! There is no way that my aunt has died? This is crazy. That wasn't supposed to happen. I'm not really sure how my mom felt when she learned that her sister had died in an accident...but I can only imagine it was heart-wrenching. We were gone just two years when we got that call I think from my Uncle Mark or Aunt Debbie. She left behind two daughters. My parents decided to go to the US without us and we stayed with some missionaries that lived in the same town as us. I remember my mom was more sad than I had ever seen her before, looking back on it and knowing how broken I would be if I lost my sister, I can't imagine how hard it must have been for her to be so far away from her family.

We got several phone calls over the years...not telling us people had died but with bad news all the same. One was that my Grandma was probably going to die soon. My parents had to decide if we would go to the US or not...we did and she did die. That was a sad call. Another call came unexpectedly. We came from church one night and the phone was ringing. I answered it and my Aunt Arlene was on the other line. She asked for my dad and a short while later he came out of his office to tell us he had two half-brother's he had no idea about. That was a shocking but good phone call. 

Whenever the phone rang in the middle of the night...or whenever the person on the other end was family...you knew it probably wasn't great news.