21 November 2007

How odd

to think that this coming Sunday will mark the 13th year since my mother's passing. Can it have been that long already? Amazing.

She was such a wonderful woman and I miss her very much. One of the sadnesses of being born to a woman of 43 and a man of 40 is that you have every chance of growing up without your parents. My father was gone when I was but 19. My mother lasted a bit longer, but Alzheimer's took her from us long before death did.

She was a tease, a true introvert (she really disliked public gatherings, probably more than I do!), a cross-word puzzle whiz and she loved to do jigsaw puzzles too. She read and delighted in poetry. She was crippled from the age of three by polio and taught us by her silent suffering that we were not to complain of pain or ask for sympathy. She loved her family with a great devotion and she gave us the gift of love - unconditional and constant.

I think with shame of the things we did to her. I remember chasing around Aunt Emma's with the snake George and I killed. She was terrified of them, and she could barely hobble at the best of times, but we made her move with that poor garter snake we killed down in Buzzard's Roost.

Thirteen years. And in that time my children have grown up and known only one grandmother. I wish they could have known the other too. She loved them as babies, and she would have loved them adults. Dearest Mom, God grant you the joy of His presence, the peace of His love!

3 comments:

Past Elder said...

We have similar "oddities" at Thanksgiving, Pastor.

Yesterday, Thanksgiving Eve, it was ten years since Nancy died at 2140 hours.

It took two burly brothers-in-law to hold me up after that happened.

That was in the moment, but what amazes me is that I have been held up since then by something else.

I have no idea why I, who had made having a crisis of faith something of an adult life style for twenty some years, and was a professed and professing confessional Lutheran not quite a year at the time, did not take this as a final insult from a God who doesn't exist and curse him. That would be the real me.

Or maybe I do. Faith is indeed entirely the gift and work of God in the Holy Ghost, just as our confessions state, since something has happened in me entirely beyond my capacity to produce, and for which I am as grateful as one simul peccator et justus can be this day.

BTW, Nancy was 43 and I was 47 when our younger and last son was born. Maybe our kids will comment on each other's blogs, or whatever they are doing in the future!

Nancy's funeral was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The concluding words of her funeral sermon are etched in my mind:

A few days ago most of us celebrated a thanksgiving that lasted one day, but Nancy began one that lasts an eternity.

RIP Babe.

Anonymous said...

Dear Pastor Weedon,

Thank-you for sharing your memories of your mother. She sounds like a wonderful woman and I am sorry that she is not with you now. I too, had loved ones who passed on early - my husband and two children. May you and your family be especially blessed above and beyond all I can hope, imagine, or ask for during this holiday season.

William Weedon said...

Past Elder,

May Nancy's memory be eternal! I'm sure that not a thanksgiving comes or goes without thanking God for her heavenly homecoming.

Lutheran Lady,

I'm sorry to hear your loss of husband and children. That is a hard cross to bear, and yet "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints."

Pax Christi!