Happy birthday, Mom!

Well, mom, it’s your106th birthday today. Next year it will be thirty years since you left this vale of tears. It’s crazy how I still imagine, around the holidays particularly, welcoming you and daddy to our home. The rocking chair is all ready for you! How I wish I could see you rocking in it, and waving your towel or working your crosswords. I’d happily pull out your mom’s teapot and rustle up a good pot of Irish Breakfast tea for you, and I wouldn’t even say a word about the three heaping teaspoons of sugar you’d drop into it. But I’ll just have to wait until you welcome us to the Eternal Home. Just a note on your birthday to say that you were an amazing mom and I wish I had been a better son to you. 

A prayer upon this day seems fitting, from Wilhelm Loehe’s Seed Grains: 

I would remember before Thee also my parents, pastors, teachers, children, kindred and benefactors, who have gone before me in the blessed faith and are now at home with Thee. If, through Jesus Christ, my prayer finds favor in Thy sight, do Thou, in my stead, repay unto them my thanks and love, in whatever manner it be possible. 

Unto all whom I have ever pained, deceived, or caused to sin, or whom I have robbed of honor, health, or possessions, whom I can no longer ask for pardon, nor restore unto them, because they already are gone into joy and pardon of every sin—gone home to Thee—to all these, O Lord, grant good for all my evil, both now and in the day of the resurrection of the just; even as Thou knowest how, and in how far all this which I ask can be granted. 

As for myself, let me spend my remaining days in prayer, in adoration of the most holy name of Jesus, and in praise and thanksgiving for the hearing of my prayers and those of all Christian people which have ever been offered up unto Thee through Jesus Christ. Amen.