April 24, 2006
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Memories
I had two trips down memory lane this weekend. I was cleaning my desk and came across this picture in the most unexpected place. Here is my mom holding me with my six siblings, taken around 1959 (?). Doesn’t everyone look happy? Except me! My brother the tenor, BTW, has his tongue out! When I see this picture, I have so much admiration for my mom. My dad was hired to teach at a college in Illinois but there was no money to move the family from Michigan. So he stayed at the school during the week and came home on weekends. He worked all day Saturday repairing broken items, preached a sermon on Sunday and then returned to Oak Park. What they had hoped would be a short-term solution turned into a couple of years. Can you imagine raising seven kids by yourself? Mom was resourceful, capable, and, above all, cheerful. And in the midst of these cares she had a vibrant ministry to many other women.The second memory trip was related. My sister just returned from vacation in Florida with my aunt and uncle. She called Saturday to tell me about it. After the news and updates she mentioned that my aunt had told her a new story about….me! I had not heard this story and I have no recollection of it. My mom died suddenly when I was 10. When I saw her body in the casket I am reported to have said, “That’s not my mom. My mom is in heaven.” My aunt stored that comment away and just recently shared that.
I don’t remember this, but it triggered many thoughts. When someone close to you dies, the clear memories you had become fuzzy and most of them dissipate into thin air. That’s why photos and stories from others are so precious. They are a way to sharpen some of the fuzzy edges, one moment of clarity. Decades after she passed, I am still so thirsty to hear stories about Mom, to know her better than I do. What remains are vague but solid impressions. The smell of coffee on her breath. The smiles we exchanged, looking up from reading. The sound of her humming while she worked. The exasperation in her words, surveying another mess. And knowledge that resides deep in my bones. I know without a doubt that she loved me. I know that she wholeheartedly trusted God. I know that she is in heaven with Christ. These are good memories.
Comments (5)
Great picture and memories. Thanks for sharing.
Heather
In the process of writing that Mary Bennet thing, I used her grief at the death of her father… So as I’m typing away (or more likely correcting my bad typing) I remembered after my dad died, several weeks after, Kent and I went to a Steve and Annie Chapman concert. during a father/daughter song I broke down. I thought I was done with the greif…I mean hehad had Alzheimers for 15 years, he hadn’t parented me for probably 14 of those years, I thought I had cried every tear I could, but back it all came. Grief… Memories…I still can’t smell a leather shop without remembering.
Do you still collect buttons? I’m glad you have your storie that come trickling down to you!
Brenda
How precious. Cant see to type…
Dana in GA
It is interesting how things that seem so far away in time can be so clear when properly prompted. In your closing paragraph I couldn’t help reviewing memories of my own mother. She joined her Savior March 31 of 2001.
Thank you.
Archie
Old pictures can bring back so many memories, so many emotions, so many senses (the smell, the feel). Sometimes grief (mostly mixed with joy) can be felt in just looking back on pictures of when my kids were little. Just the other day, Elliot and I looked through all the baby pictures. Sometimes he would just stop and think and remember and just stare into space. Funny, how we see those baby pictures and long to hold that baby again–yet at the same time experience so much joy that our children are growing up and maturing. I think there is much grief, often mixed with much joy, in all of life.