In Memoriam: Mom

I have been reflecting on my mother during the last few days of her life: the woman she was to others, the woman she was to me.

Life has been an amazing trip through the formative years, adolescence, maturity and adulthood. The week before she passed, she carefully showed my son Tim and I how to trim her beloved roses back to the fifth leaf to ensure more buds. A gardener to the end!

One of her favorite sayings when Don and I were growing up was, 'We're a team! We just need to pull together!'

And so we have. When time was short, the family pulled together: we gained strength as we walked with her as far as we could and gently handed her off to God.

Her pastors and church family, Red Hatters and Walking group, neighbors and friends pulled together, swarming to her side, providing meals and desserts and hugs and stories.

Life has sometimes been compared to a ship sailing on the horizon as it drifts out of sight, only to be visible to the people awaiting its arrival at its destination port.

But I like to think of it more as a journey. We hear the crunch of our feet as we meander along the path, past wonderfully scented bushes of honeysuckle, morning glory, carnations and -- of course --roses. We add walkers as their paths intersect with ours and enjoy the company, the warm sun, the breeze. Walkers come and go, each on their own journey. If we are exceptionally lucky, some people fall in step with us and head towards the same point on the horizon for most of our lives.

My mother walked with most of us in this room. Some of her friendships lasted over 60 years. Many of you have shared your gratefulness for sharing her journey. We are soothed and honored by that, by her faith in God's kingdom. Her church life brought forth a depth and breadth to her serving others. She visited those in need and the infirmed, not just once but over many months and years.

In the last weeks of her life, we had a lot of good talks. She told me that she doesn't think children ever really grow up. I smiled at that, thinking she must not have felt grown up or particularly brave, even at 79. I wondered if she wished we wouldn't grow up entirely, so she would always feel needed in the way she was when we were young.

I love that we live the legacy of our parents' lives. She is her mother's daughter, and her father's too. Parts of them are embedded in me, although I cannot know in what ways. She is visible in her family here today, in our giving natures, in the laughter and love of her grandsons who were the loves of her life.

She so wanted to see my boys marry and someday hold her great-grandchildren. But I know this: Before they are mine in this world to hold, my mother will know them in Heaven, rock them gently and sing, tell them funny stories about their fathers, and feel their smiles clutch her heart.

She won't miss a thing.

Angels

Some moments are just too extraordinary for words.

I was in a wicked travel schedule: from home (Sacramento County) to work (San Joaquin County) to Palo Alto (Stanford hospital) and back home every day. My dad had gone in for a pretty serious operation and had experienced a general system failure, was in the hospital for weeks on all sorts of machines.

Some days, it's as if the car drove itself there. Life became a blur of gas stations and freeways. I had my favorite stations where I'd always stop, the most convenient ones along the route. It seemed that 'jet fuel' (coffee) was the only way I was functioning at this point, so I always headed inside for a cup.

This one particular day my regular station in Tracy had yellow caution around all the pumps and appeared closed, so I headed down a mile and stopped somewhere new. I started the pump and went inside. An elderly woman stood beside me pouring herself a cup. I greeted her quietly and busied myself with filling my cup, hunting for cream, adding a sugar substitute, when I heard her quietly turn to me and ask, "Who in your family is sick?"

I stopped cold. I turned to her fully now, looking down at her round and beautiful face. She had dyed dark brown hair, curly and thin, was about 4' 11", with the most kind brown eyes. "My father," I replied, barely able to speak as my eyes brimmed with tears. "He is gravely ill."

She studied me for a moment and asked, "What is your father's name?" Tears now spilled down my cheeks as I said, "Charles." I choked it out, as she gave me a tender embrace.

We stood together in the check out line, our coffee cups in hand, and she turned to me one last time as she gave her money to the clerk. "I needed your father's name so I can pray for him." I felt a rush of relief as she gave me one more sweet hug before heading into her day.

I paid for my coffee, thinking I should have asked her name. I rushed outside to see if I could catch her, but she was gone. How did she know, I wondered. I thought of how unlikely it was that our paths crossed.

I hopped in the car and got back on the road but before leaving town decided to drive past the gas station I normally use. There was no caution tape anywhere. Cars filled the pumps just like any other time I've been there, nothing like it had been 15 minutes before.

A chill snaked up my arms. Angels are everywhere.

Heroes

I've been thinking a lot about recent conversations I've had with my mom and her perception about devotion and support. She has a very giving and kind heart, my mom; whenever anyone is in pain or ill or in need, she is the first visitor, first caller, first offer for a helping hand.

When life throws a curveball at someone we love, we all react differently. Many of us hide for fear of saying the wrong thing or, at the very least, withdraw slightly, trying to grip the issue and gain solid footing before offering our aide. We allow ourselves the 'out' by thinking we've got to be stoic and strong for their sake.

How easy that reaction is to misinterpret as not caring. The loved one who is struggling through the life crisis notices the phone is still. Wouldn't an outpouring of support in whatever form it comes be preferred, the front doorbell constantly ringing with the comfort of those whose lives we have touched and bettered?

To step forward, unafraid of the hard stuff, is to realize that life is all about the connectivity of spirit and humanity. If your heart is full, the moments you spend holding hands will help you find the words. It's a love thing.

Maybe that's what my wise mother learned about life so early on. Our society calls people like these nurturers, but I disagree: I think they're heroes in the truest sense of the word.

Tech Support

The Easter Sunday sermon was about the role the angels played in helping the witnesses understand the events surrounding Jesus' resurrection. The pastor likened them to a technical support team for God.

I like that analogy. What else is technical support than an external resource to help make sense of what we see but don't comprehend?

At work and play, the skills we've picked up along the way sometimes lands us in this role. We can program sprinklers and build fences, sail, sew, do taxes, teach and fix cars, run electrical lines, have a strong spiritual undercurrent, invent cool stuff. Everybody comes along nicely when we share our knowledge and expertise. It's not possible to know it all ourselves.

What a welcome relief for technical support when problems just won't solve themselves! When things loom large and we don't have the tools we need for the task, God's team is always at the ready. We just need to ask.

NMcC

The Vigilant Gardener

Spring is a time of birth and rebirth, when nature wipes the slate clean and gives us a new beginning. Plants draw forth tender new shoots, hyper sensitive to the warm sun, the gentle breeze, the weight of the rain. They grow strong and purposeful in the fertile soil and climate.

Sometimes I feel myself growing that way, new gentle shoots opening to strengthen and beautify what is already there. My garden has had a grand show of tulips and daffodils, stately trees casting graceful shade, colorful verbena growing wild and plentiful, breathtaking rhodedendrons.

Yes, weeds, too. They begin like all the others as small green shoots, needing no tending, no special vitamins or care, no pruning. In a wild garden, the gardener does not know what the shoot will become: plucking it too early may uproot a beautiful rose or azalea. So we water it along with the rest, and watch it grow.

Those we love are drawn similarly into the garden of our heart, rooted deeply with enough sun and fertile room to flourish. The flower beds of our friends and family occasionally are marred by people who vie for nutrients and attention but diminish the garden. It's so hard at first to tell, isn't it, if they'll become a bird of paradise or a ragweed, so we welcome them in and tend to their needs, waiting to see what they become. A vigilant gardener will know when it's time to till the soil and pull up the roots of what doesn't belong.

Laugh Lines

My mother sat small in her chair as Hospice gently explained the support they will provide as we walk this path together. In one section of one of the myraid of forms, she was asked her age. Seventy nine, she answered. I saw her countenance change and her face draw into what I could not help but articulate in words. 'How'd THAT happen?' I exclaimed, and we all laughed!

That's really how it is, you know. What seems like infinite time when we sit cross legged in the sun playing Fish or Sir Hinkle Finiduster, during endless summer days of swimming and mosquito bites, and leisure time of learning how to shave our legs and wear stockings, is the blink of an eye.

The face reflected back at me is what I have gradually come to know as it has weathered and changed. To her, it is barely recognizable as the girl she knows herself to be.

The girl I am is here, too, as I study my reflection. I lean forward and draw my skin smooth. My mind jumps to staccato memories of finding a live lobster in the sink in the kitchen; my first love, first real job, first graduation, first home; catching a fish, horseback riding, scubadiving and snorkeling, kayaking, riding in a hot air balloon and playing a Native American drum, mothering. I close my eyes and feel all the hugs through the years of people long gone. Like the whip of a tail, life spins us around and snaps us ahead of ourselves.

I watch my mother's face come alive: her blue eyes sparkle as her face draws into well traveled laugh lines. She's earned these, I think: life has etched these, piled up moments of celebration and tenderness. She has lived.

Under Construction

I was stuck in traffic today, the kind of slowdown on the freeway that limps along at a snail's pace. I started out listening to music, switched to reading something from the glove box, and eventually gazed irritatingly at the sea of cars ahead. My mind wandered into imagining there was a significant hold up, say an accident requiring a dramatic rescue or an overturned big rig that had spilled its load of lima beans. I felt better, even noble, while I waited, thinking Hey, no problem: that can't be helped! The delay is totally understandable!

The belly crawl continued mile after mile, toward what eventually became three people on the side of the road in orange safety vests, one in the truck, one watching and one filling a little hole in the road on the shoulder. Excuse Me? When I had the chance, I put real ATTITUDE into dashing past with a sour look on my face. I wanted to scream: Hey there, you... yes you, look alive! Grab a shovel! Don't you see the disruption you are causing? Why isn't the guy sitting in the cab out there with the team, working to get it done? Tempis fugit.

Why are we so irritated by these kinds of things when we know everywhere in life is under construction? I worry that the modern pace of life has condensed situations and people into pixels that we have lost our compassion to know.

In news articles and online, I get a kick out of the 'Click here for complete story' prompt. How ridiculous a concept is that! Stories don't end: they, like us, begin small, as phrases, and mature into paragraphs, then into chapters which eventually transforms into a bestseller. Life comes as a full length feature with sequels, as life builds on life, family on family, holding the world. There are no cliff notes for it, no chance to read the last page to see how it turns out. Until the obit is written and the last page is penned, until the world comes to Parade Rest, it's all up for grabs.

Thank God for that.