Raising Rushes : Joy comes in the morning

Reeta Gayle Tullos

This weekend has been long and emotion filled. Wednesday, June 24, 2009 around 1:00pm my great Aunt Reeta Gayle Tullos passed away and joined the Father. October of 2008 she was diagnosed with ALZ. A diagnosis that was probably close as can be, but my family is unsure of when she actually started having symptoms of this disease. Reeta seemed to progress rapidly. The last 5 or 6 weeks of her life with stable. She was very enjoyable and manageable. The Thursday before her death, Reeta fell while at my grandparents house and hit her head. It split it from front to back. She was rushed to Natchitoches ER and from there was airlifted to LSU-S for emergency surgery on her brian. She had bleeding on her brian. The thing that is thought to have ended it all, was her lungs. One thing Reeta liked was her cigerattes. The fact that she smoked for years on end and very heavily, her lungs were not able to hold up. Before she was taking to the Natchitoches hospital, I was told that she went around to each person and kissed them on the lips and told them that she loved them. Almost as if she knew she would be leaving her earthly family and joining in the eternal family. Even though it was a hard part of life to under take today, it was one, that in the long end brings less suffering.

Family reunions are not often thought of as coming during a time of family funerals and memorial services. The weekend was made nice by being able to see family from all over the U.S. My brother, Dan, who lives in Sarasota flew in. My aunt Donna Gayle who lives in Ponte Vedra, FL flew in, and my uncle Bill who lives in Austin, TX came in. An old family friend and past "Aunt Ann" was also in from Austin, TX. It's not often that all 6 of Dad and Ruth's children are together under one roof, so when it does occur we take every advantage of pictures. Here are a couple of pictures from the weekend.