DOWN HOME: Martha: My sister, my hero

down home

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Martha hears!

Those are the most tangible words of comfort I’ve considered in a long, long time.

Martha hears! The thought came to mind early Sunday, April 26, just a few moments after Daddy called to report news that broke our hearts while it also filled them with hope: Martha, my sister, had just gone to be with the Lord.

Martha lived a few months past 50 beautiful years. She never heard a word until she entered heaven and God said to her, “Welcome, Martha.” (Or as her friend Diane speculated, maybe she got to heaven and discovered everybody speaks in sign language there.)

In addition to her deafness, Martha was born with kidney problems and almost died many times while she was an infant. But she persevered. She overcame many surgeries—so many, in fact, we lost count.

The best surgery happened more than 14 years ago, when Daddy gave Martha one of his kidneys—and a new lease on life. Daddy’s kidney functioned far longer than the doctors anticipated, but it eventually failed. So, she endured dialysis three days a week for the past 18 months.

A few weeks ago, Martha’s medical team cleared her for another transplant. We all rejoiced and looked ahead with optimism.

But while dialysis sustains life, it pummels the body. So, a “minor procedure” in the hospital resulted in pneumonia, a blood clot, and a heart attack that took Martha’s physical life.

If you’ve lost a loved one, you know how we’re vacillating between sheer grief, denial, acceptance and hope. As bad as it is for my brother, Martin, and me, we’re grieving even more deeply for the loss felt by Martha’s beloved husband, Billy, and our dear parents, Marvin and Margaret.


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Besides our hope in Christ for an eternal reunion with Martha, the greatest blessing of this week has been spending time with her friends and meeting the people whose lives she changed.

Martha was a teacher’s aide at the Wichita Falls Regional School for the Deaf for 26 years. A mother of two deaf sons told me Martha taught her to use sign language so that she could talk to her own children. Another mother said Martha taught her deaf son to “talk” with his hands. At the visitation, we finally met Kim, a 29-year-old deaf-blind woman whom Martha began to teach when Kim was a toddler, and whom Martha loved like the daughter her body could not bear.

Over and over, people in Wichita Falls—hearing and deaf—told us how much they loved Martha because Martha loved them.

My sister was my hero.

Martha endured more pain and more challenges than I could imagine in a dozen lifetimes. But for her, life was “No Problem!” She never complained. She laughed. She loved. She kissed and hugged. The world, and now heaven, are far better places because of Martha’s presence.

 


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