Category Archives: Adult Children

Young Love (#72)

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July 25 – 27, 1969:

After Nate’s graduation, the 8-hour drive together to his parents’ home was pure pleasure. As he drove, I studied my handsome groom, tanned and muscular after his hard physical weeks under the Army’s tutelage. He had never looked better, and my eyes drank him in.

Main St.Throughout the weekend with his parents, we shared gourmet meals lovingly made by his mother, and talked about wedding plans. Nate and I took late-night walks around his old neighborhood, strolling hand-in-hand with frequent stops to give and receive more of those stored-up kisses. It was fun to hear stories of his childhood, and I could easily picture him biking down Main Street with his grade school buddies.

PackingToward the close of the weekend, we were back in the car driving the 4 hours to Wilmette where a massive clean-up was under way after my folks’ garage sale. Their moving date was 3 days hence, and the last big push to empty their home was at hand.

Nate and I had begged out of our first counseling week at the church camp to help Mom and Dad, and it’s a good thing we did. They needed all hands on deck. After working non-stop for many weeks readying the house, both of them were depleted, carrying on by grit alone.

LoadingThe peaceful calm of Nate’s home evaporated as we joined forces with Mom, Dad, Mary, Bervin, and brother Tom, sorting, lifting, hauling, shoving, and driving load after load to other locations. In the process, Nate and I inherited a small apartment-sized stove, for which we were grateful. It was stored at the next-door-neighbors’ house, since we hadn’t yet looked for an apartment in Champaign.

In retrospect, I can hardly believe we had insisted on a big wedding so close to my parents’ big move. The word “selfish” springs to mind. Today I am the age my father was when this unfolded, and just reading about it makes me tired. I’m grateful their double duty didn’t swamp them completely. That move was difficult for them in every way.

They were leaving a home that had been the place where my brother, sister, and I had grown from children into adults. It’s where all of our youthful dates originated and where our teenage pals hung out, day… and night. It’s where Mom produced hundreds of dinners, parties, and celebrations, happily including our friends in whatever was happening. It’s where Dad walked out the front door every morning to his office in the Loop and walked back in every night at 6:15 to Mom’s squeals of delight and her kisses. And it’s where he finally retired at the age of 70.

In addition to the move and the wedding, Mom’s 3 children were all stepping into new lives, leaving a mother who’d loved every minute of parenting them and had no interest in an empty nest. (None of us have a single memory of her ever saying no.) She had wanted a dozen kids, but when that couldn’t happen, she told us she’d just had the 3 best instead.

Mary and Bervin at front doorAnd we all knew that when moving day came, for these reasons and many others, Mom would struggle to walk out the door.

“This is what the Lord says – Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!” (Isaiah 43:18-19)

Seven Years Ago

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November 3rd will always be an important day for our family. It’s the day we encircled Nate’s bed and released him from this world to head into the next – a most painful experience.

Today, 7 years later, our grown children and I can talk about Nate without that pain. Instead we’ve shared memories and expressions of gratitude today. We’ve enjoyed a spirit of celebration connected to the man who played such major roles in our lives. And we’ve acknowledged that he was given to us just for that time. On God’s calendar, everything worked out perfectly, which included Nate’s November 3rd departure.

img_0636-1Recently, as I cleaned a small store room in our basement, I came across an old, stained cardboard box. I’ve kept careful track of this box for nearly 50 years, because I’ve known what was inside: letters written between Nate and I from the time we first met till we were married. It was the chronicle of our love story – detailing how it grew from friendship into love, then from dating into marriage.

And so, these many decades later, it seemed like a good time to open the box and re-read the narrative.

I cleared the dining room table and cut the old tape, allowing the letters to slip out – a treasure trove of communication sent between Nate and I from 1966 through 1969.

Since we lived many miles apart when we first met and later while we were dating, the only option back then was to wait in line for time on a shared telephone or to write letters. Besides, phone use was expensive, but mail needed only a 3-cent stamp. As a result, our love story is all in writing.

Since the letters weren’t in any special order, the first thing to do was organize them by date. Luckily, Nate was a guy who dated virtually everything. And when I was finished sorting, I counted them all – 438!

438-letters

What a delight it was to take several days to read through them, remembering things I hadn’t thought about in decades. Nate knew he wanted to marry me shortly after we met. But I was just getting involved with someone else, not ready for any serious commitment.

img_3938So, going through these old letters reminded me of three of Nate’s finest character qualities: endurance, perseverance, and faithfulness. Though he knew what he wanted (me), he patiently endured my year-long uncertainty about him. Even when I wrote about the virtues of the other guy, Nate persevered with kindness, giving me the freedom and time to make my own decision. He never tried to “talk me into” liking him best, but simply waited…. and waited…. faithfully sending a letter every single day.

(Tomorrow: excerpts from a love story)

Love “….always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:7)

God’s Sneak-Peeks

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Those of us who follow Christ believe him when he says he’s always with us. He also says he’ll never abandon us or fail us and that he surrounds us with his presence. We believe all of it.

The problem comes in trusting this One we can’t see or feel. In our recent days of missing Mary, people have lovingly said, “Hold tight to Jesus’ hand.” Or, “I’m praying you’ll feel God’s everlasting arms around you.”

Both of these word pictures are sanctioned in Scripture, and we want to trust them as real, but there’s no visible proof – and sometimes it’s hard.

hand-of-god

(Michelangelo tried to visualize the invisible, above.)

God knows of our human limitations and the difficulty of relating to an unseen God. After all, Jesus was human, too, and experienced these same limits. Even during his torturous hours on the cross, his cries were to his invisible Father. So how do we bridge this gap? How do we believe he is truly with us?

The answer? It’s by way of the sneak-peeks he gives.

I believe God sometimes demonstrates that he’s close to us in real-time…. in touchable, visible ways. Our part is to notice and ponder what he shows us, deciding for ourselves whether or not to attribute these things to him.

During Mary’s sudden, short decline, he gave us several of these powerful sneak-peeks that we believe indicated his closeness. For example – Julia had given her mom a gardenia plant for Mother’s Day in May.

flower-potMary had put it in a stone-covered pot, writing a Scripture verse around the rim: “Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord Himself, is the Rock eternal.” (Isaiah 26:4)

Through the summer it had bloomed beautifully under Mary’s watchful care. But then her illness escalated, and tending to the gardenia fell by the wayside.

When Julia arrived to care for her mom, she saw that her gardenia-gift was needy. Taking a moment to pluck off the many dead blossoms, she noticed it didn’t have even one promising bud. But then Mary’s illness drew her attention away.

And then Mary went to heaven.

In the painful first hour that followed her death, after Hospice and funeral home personnel had come and gone, none of us knew what to do. Then, as we stood around in the kitchen without a plan, someone said, “Hey! Look at that plant!”

the-gardeniaWe were dumbfounded to see a fully opened, perfectly formed gardenia blossom on Mary’s now-healthy plant.

Some would call that a coincidence or a freak of nature. We’d rather give the credit to our unseen God who uplifted us in a low moment with the assurance that he was close by. And against all logic, we had a sweet-smelling gardenia blossom to prove it.

“Be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)