Gratitude at the Gravesite

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Our family has spent Memorial Day at Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery for many decades. Not once have we been rained on… until today.

Standing under umbrellas in a downpour, several people shared thoughts from their hearts. Although we usually talk about the lives of those buried there (the first one 99 years ago), today our sharing was all about Nate. It’s been nearly seven months since his funeral, and he’s the seventh family member to be laid to rest in this plot.

As we stood in the rain, I knew my shivering had nothing to do with being wet and everything to do with missing Nate. Bervin quoted Romans 12:12, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer,” describing ways Nate had modeled this in front of all of us. Mary shared his favorite Scripture from Hebrews 12 about Jesus enduring his suffering, knowing joy would come later. She commented on Nate’s suffering being over, and the joy he now knows.

My nephew Luke told how much he appreciated Nate’s knowledge of history and the fact that he knew something about everything, an interesting person to talk to. Another Luke, like-a-nephew, mentioned talking with Nate last Memorial Day on this spot, realizing for the first time how great his back pain had become. He admired Nate’s not having taken a pass on the cemetery event but choosing to be present and participating, without complaint.

My brother Tom described how he’d known Nate well after sharing office space with him for 19 years. He’d watched him go through ups and downs in business and personal finance, sometimes becoming discouraged but never giving up. Having met each of Nate’s law clients since his death, Tom reported how much respect they all held for him and shared positive client comments. He also described a giant box of “show and tell” items he’d brought to share with us over lunch.

When it was my turn to talk, I read a verse from Ecclesiastes that compares controlling the wind with controlling the arrival of death. Neither can be done. Thankfully the control of both is in the flawlessly capable hands of Jesus Christ.

While crying, part of me was thinking, “I can’t believe my husband is dead and buried!” But the rest of me was feeling lifted and loved by the words being spoken. Mary finally said, “The weather is weeping, too, but we know this rain isn’t an accident. Maybe God knew it would be a sad Memorial Day and is helping us keep it short.” We moved to the cars and headed for our picnic, indoors at a local McDonald’s rather than our regular park location nearby.

Tom’s box contained Nate’s leather jacket and personal items from his desk and file cabinets, including unnumbered family pictures, artwork from our children’s grade school years, framed degrees and Elvis paraphernalia.

Two phone texts came through in the middle of our day together, one from Nelson in Africa and the other from Linnea in Florida, both promising Memorial Day prayer and describing strong family bonds that reached across thousands of miles. An email from Hans and Katy had accomplished the same. So, all of us were present and accounted for, including Nate… via sweet memories.

“No man has power over the wind to contain it; so no one has power over the day of his death.” (Ecclesiastes 8:8a)

Good Clean Fun

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Remembering back to my days of young motherhood, I recall being hopeful my third pregnancy would bring us a girl. We had two delightful boys, ages four and two, and having a daughter would round out the picture.

When Linnea was born, my wish came true. As we opened her baby gifts, to my delight most of the tiny clothes were pink. What fun it was to look into the wash machine and see a rosy glow radiating through the water after four years of washing blue. It occurred to me that doing baby laundry, whether blue or pink, was good clean fun. One miniature outfit was cuter than the next, and handling them reminded me again and again I was a mommy, my childhood dream come true.

Motherhood moves from one season to another like any other station in life, and although our babies’ clothes were given away years ago, Nate and I were kept busy at active parenting from 1973 until just recently. Actually, the Nyman nest emptied only two weeks before we learned of his terminal cancer last September. (Our two younger girls had chosen to opt out of college in favor of becoming working girls in Chicago, seeking a break from academics and eagerly wanting to room together for a year. So they were nearby, but not living with us.)

Then our family’s world was flipped upside down by Nate’s dreadful diagnosis. Our kids rushed home, and we clung to each other as his life slipped away from us. A new season began, one that didn’t include Nate, and one of the unnumbered losses was our parenting partnership. Although our nest had emptied, the delightful stage of friendship-parenting our grown children together would have continued indefinitely.

But now there’s just me.

God had already begun unfolding a new season of parenting for both of us, however, before Nate died: grandparenting. New lives, new adventures. One of the sweet memories I’ll hold dear after helping with Hans and Katy’s babies in Britain,  was a parenting déjà vu moment in my role as a grandmother: I got to wash baby clothes again.

The laundry was blue and pink for newborns Thomas and Evelyn, and multi-colored for toddler Nicholas, but just as it was when I was a new mommy, handling each miniature item was a pleasure. After the first load had been clothes-pinned to the line, I stood back and admired the view, getting the same kick out of surveying those tiny clothes as I did 37 years ago. It was a moment of recognizing how God had gifted me with the special blessing of having five little children in my life during the same season in which I am mourning the loss of my husband.

Although the seasons didn’t arrive looking exactly as I thought they would, God is still in charge of the changes.  And while doing baby laundry in England, he used a powerful visual to remind me that even without Nate, some of life can still be good, clean fun.

”The living God changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning.” Daniel 2:21

What happened?

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As I’ve bumped into blog readers here and there, many have asked questions about past posts. “How did that situation end up? Did you ever figure out the mystery of those circumstances?”

Here are a few updates:

1. On March 26 (“Plan B”) I went over the handle bars on my bike after Jack bolted in front of me to chase a squirrel. The squirrel got away unharmed, but I landed in the emergency room that night for scans, x-rays and wound-cleaning. Knowing I blossomed into quite a sight, readers have wondered how healing has gone. The answer? Except for a spot of pink on one cheek, you’d never know of my biking adventure.

2. On April 12 (“Hold on”) I arrived for a routine doctor’s appointment and was told I had no insurance coverage. In order to be seen that day, I had to pay several hundred dollars in cash. Appalled at the thought of being uninsured, I spent three days unraveling the tangle. It turned out the doctor’s office was using Nate’s health insurance card number instead of mine, one digit different. (We had canceled his insurance after he died last November.) When she told me I hadn’t had insurance since last fall, without realizing it she was talking about Nate. Mystery solved, trouble averted, refund granted.

3. On April 15 (“Taming Nature”) I wrote about our beach creek and its wayward temperament, how it had wandered 600 yards down from its usual course, widening, eroding the dune and becoming stagnant. An earth mover had spent two days rearranging nature, forcing the creek on a straight route from woods to lake. Has the creek been obedient? Sort of. Gently, inch by inch, it has leaned left, quietly carving a path back to its errant course. Robust young men have worked at shoveling and remaking a straight entrance into Lake Michigan, but each morning their efforts to reshape the sand have been erased. It’ll take more than a bull dozer and a couple of shovels to conquer Deer Creek.

4. On April 16 (“Love in Bloom”) I blogged about a host of mysterious white daffodils that came up and bloomed beautifully in our shady, ivy-covered yard. I enjoyed your comments and theories about this delightful surprise and In the last six weeks I’ve asked everyone I know if he/she/they were responsible but received only “no’s”. Nancy’s blog comment was, we concluded, closest to what must have happened. I think Little Red, the star of the April 13 blog (“Taught by a Squirrel”) must have done the planting. Although it’s possible he did it with his own dinner in mind, I prefer to think he was just that nice of a little guy.

Life is always changing. To remain still would be a fast route to stagnant, just like Deer Creek. For some, change is difficult. For others, it’s energizing. Most of us are somewhere in the middle, doing our best to keep up with the endless shifts.

The trick is finding our stability not in the change around us but in the One who orchestrates it.

“Accept the way God does things, for who can straighten what he has made crooked?” (Ecclesiastes 7:13)