Memory Eternal, Mom

This day last year, I helped to lay you in your bed downstairs when Dad, Joel, Katie, Luke and Liesl brought your body home. It was hard to have you with us and also no longer there. It was a blessing to have a few more days to see your beautiful face, to tend to your dear body that had born so much for us, to gather around you as all of your children and grandchildren in prayers and readings and songs. We read all the way through the Bible memory book that you and Dad made before you were married and kept working at all your lives. It was very hard to lay you in the ground and give your body over to the earth, but you would have loved the place that Dad picked out for the two of you. It’s truly a beautiful grave, among the native trees of Virginia, near a field sloping down to the nearby Shenandoah. You’re father and mother would have approved as well. How delightful it would be to show it to all of you. It’s kind of funny how much several of us also love to hear the prayers and songs of the Cistercian monks in their nearby abbey. You would have appreciated this too, although on some days you might have laughed and shaken your head at any of us mooning over monks. I’ve got a second essay being published in the Front Porch Republic. You missed them both, and I wrote them both thinking mostly of how much fun it would have been to talk it all over with you. And you would have really laughed to hear me laugh about being given more responsibilities at church and at the little company were I work. I don’t expect that your father would have fully approved of all the frippery, but grandma would have been proud nonetheless. There is an awful lot missing around home with you gone. We’re hurting in your absence, but you left behind a husband who really works hard to take care of himself and of all the children that you had together. And a few of those children are also working awfully hard to take care of each other. You did a pretty decent job of raising them and teaching them about things that matter. I don’t expect you’re in much danger these days of getting more big headed, but you know I always liked to hold on to the task of keeping you humble as one of my special chores around the house. So I’ll not say much more about what you left behind in case it tempt you to any self-congratulations as unlikely as that might be. But I will say that by remembering you as long as I keep being allowed to kick about this place, I’m also still learning who you were. You prayed with a terrible lot of heart for us all, and I expect that you’re still doing something mighty near to that. So here’s my hello and thank you and goodbye all over again on this anniversary of losing you. There’s a whole bunch of us praying with you, Mom, and even for you. May Jesus remember us all in His kingdom as we look to Him to bring us home.