Melissa E. Hodge's Obituary
Melissa Elizabeth Hodge, was taken home by her heavenly father on January 7, 2019, at the age of 59. Services will be held Monday, January 14, 2019, in the Chapel of Rader Funeral Home at 10am; following the funeral a committal will be held at Union Grove Cemetery. The family would like to welcome all for a celebration of her life on Sunday from 3-5 PM at Rader Funeral Home. Just as she would have it.
Mom was born on 11/11/59 to Billy Paul (PawPaw) and Jan Shipp (Gamomma) in Longview, Texas where she danced and laughed and invigorated countless hearts for 59 years. She graduated Longview High School in 1978. After gaining a degree as a surgery tech at Kilgore College, she passionately pursued her career in medicine as a cosmetic surgery nurse.
Those who knew Mom knew she loved to love people, but most of all she loved my father Gary Hodge. They married in the summer of 1982. In my Father’s eyes Mom was a priceless gem, a fun loving best-friend rarer by far than a sapphire and more precious than a ruby. They spent seasons together camping, fly fishing, and skiing with close friends - Writing memories my brother and I would come to laugh about in the kitchen when we got older.
Vogue was Mom. She loved style. She once told me, “Fashion comes and goes, style never changes.” And on many occasions to others including myself, “It’s good to be different. [someone has to be first]” She refused the mold of the majority if it offended her sensitivities or violated her convictions. Mom’s beauty was a stranger to vanity. She loathed the cheap and make-believe but was gifted with this boundless creativity to make everything work, always.
Since 1988, Mother was a title Melissa Hodge never relinquished. For as long as my brother and I can remember the instruction, “Give it to God” was the answer when cards weren’t falling in our favor or the anxiety of the world laid heavy on our shoulders. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it” She never wavered. Having put her trust in the Lord as a child at St. Mary’s, she loved Him more with every passing year. The variances of life’s uncertainties never altered her course. She remained steadfast, immovable, abounding always in the work of the Lord. Despite the pain of uncertainty every time our trucks left the driveway, Mom was always there. She was a mother from the beginning, and a mother at the end. She was our rock and now rests with him whom she loved and served.
Tucked in her purse on the kitchen table was a short Psalm 23 devotional beginning, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” - Psalm 23:1 The dancing shimmer of her life came from a heart that gave and gave and gave with no anticipation of a return. Mom had that, je ne sais quoi. All who knew her felt it, bore witness to it, experienced and believed in it.
She was preceded in death by her father, Billy Paul Shipp.
Melissa is survived by her husband, Gary Hodge; and her two sons and daughter-in-law, Spencer and Ashley Hodge; and Forrest Hodge; her sister and brother-in-law, Rosalyn and Tom Diball; her sister and brother-in-law, Angie and Doug Bellatti; her brother and sister-in-law, Byron and Leslie Shipp; her brother and sister-in-law, Matt and Brandi Shipp; her sister and brother-in-law, Myra and Casey Norris.
The light from her devotion and the aroma from her character lives on to bless perpetually the lives of all who loved her.
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