I see the yard and trees and driveway through the window and I wonder if anything stays the same.
In ’61 a man and woman marry and 7 children come from the union. The first dies in infancy. Thirty-two happy years pass and the husband dies too soon, leaving wife, two young sons, four other children grown and gone. Fifteen years later a life-time family friend dies after long illness and her lonely husband finds a widowed mother with children no longer at home. This man and woman find wedded joy on a small farm, “young at 70” and then “young at 80.”
It is that 3-acre farm I observe this morning as I remember the husband’s recent death and the path my dear mother will take after selling out. She is 83 and longevity is in her bones.
But no one lives forever, or so I’m told.
I’m no fan of this specific passing of time. I sort through the too much stuff, a lifetime of love and living, almost countless things that hint at what life was. No one, least of all my mom, is foolish enough to think things matter most. All of this stuff mattered to my Mom because life mattered.
Now we are getting rid of it and dozens of people come and buy this and that. “Should we get a dumpster, Mom?” I ask, knowing the days of the sale were ending and the thrift store would not take everything.
“I don’t want my China going in the dumpster,” she replies simply and kindly. “I have friends that will help me box it up and we will take it to the drop off.” There are several thrift stores but only one could bring a truck. We six children helped her for a week but had to return to our work and families. I was glad to know some other ‘someones’ in unknown homes would enjoy her life goods.
Where now? Elders lead the way, following the path of their own elders. My Great-Great Grandpa Markey moved to Kansas about 1908 to help build a Wesleyan Methodist College in the small farming town of Miltonvale. His daughter Elizabeth attended that college and married a man she met there, my Great-Grandpa Ray Davidson. He died in a drowning accident in the early 20’s when my Grandma Freida was a toddler.
My Great-Grandma Elizabeth re-married a few years later to a widower, by the name of Lewis Currie – he too with child, Dorothy. Soon there was “his, hers, theirs” and the Currie blend comprised a family of 3 girls and 1 boy: Dorothy, Freida, Laona, and Lewis. Lewis still lives in Oregon at age 93.
All these elders followed those before and so will my Mom and so will I in time. No one knows when. It is a too well-worn path, one too weary for speaking, one that lodges in the throat like a morsel too big to swallow: Why must it be so?
There are clues, and clues abundant for dealing with it, like the one I heard this morning: “Better to give thanks you had the gift at all than complain it doesn’t last forever.”
Give thanks. It is the only and best response. The wonder of life, rightly received, reduces us to thanksgiving, to worship.
But forever is written in. We cannot escape it. And what we call nostalgia is a wound that hints of something beyond. We were made for eternity but we are bound in time. We will all gamble with reality and lose . . . but the great mystery awaits.
My Mom and Dad taught me the Gospel, that Christ through whom the world was made also redeemed it. What was lost can be found. What was lost IS found. The second Adam outwitted the damning results of the first. The heal-bruiser will not survive the mighty head-crushing . . . and all will be new someday.
This blessed hope lets me dare to believe this life really does matter: the 3 acres, the stuff, the years of love and joy and trial that disappear as if they never were. An infinite personal God holds it all, He is with us, and He will do us well.
That’s the faith I have. In the end, it is all I have. And that’s enough for me.
Randy Huff and his wife lived for 5 years in Roanoke (Hollins) where they raised 2 sons. Randy served as Dean of Students at a Christian school and then worked in construction. For the last 8 years he has served as pastor of a church in North Pole, Alaska.