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.