Two weeks before
Thanksgiving 1969, my mother suddenly died due a massive stoke and subsequent
heart attack. My Dad and I were in shocked disbelief. No warning prepared us
for her death. Indeed, no warning would have done so. The days following the
funeral found us going through our days like emotional zombies. Life was
confusing. Emotionally we felt as cold and gloomy as the cold steel gray skies
of November. Mom was without a doubt the keeper and the catalyst of joy in our
home. Her absence left a void in our lives that transformed the home where we
lived into just a house to which we came in the evening to pass away the night.
With each new day there was an anticipation that things had to get better.
There was even a vague hope this would be the day we were going to awaken from
a bad dream. The new day, however, brought us more of the same. I moved home
from college and became a commuter while trying to help my Dad with the
household responsibilities. I was an inadequate replacement for my Mom’s
knowledge and abilities. Yet my meager knowledge of the household operations
was more than my Dad had. His world and his life revolved around his
occupation. Now he was cast adrift in a world he did not know and frankly had
little emotional energy to try and understand.
I
was in my senior year of college and looking forward to marriage in the coming
June. It should have been a time of excited plans and emotional joy. Now I
anticipated a wedding my mother would never see. I focused upon meaningless
issues like who would stand beside my Dad for wedding pictures? Who would host
the bridal shower for my side of the family? Meaningless questions swirled in a
confused mind where expectations were colliding with reality. Mom was not here
and even things at a wedding months away would be different. How egocentric
grief can become.
As
the Thanksgiving holiday loomed, Dad declared he didn’t feel like celebrating
with a bunch of people. Now I was torn between caring for my Dad and spending
time with my fiancée’s family as planned and promised. The weekend before the
holiday my Dad was coerced into spend Thanksgiving Day with his sister. He
grudgingly agreed and I guiltily made the trip from suburban Philadelphia to be
with my fiancée’s family. A freak snow storm extended my stay in Lancaster for
a day only heaping an extra measure of emotional guilt upon my shoulders. Any
other time an extra day with the one I loved would have been a wonderful
windfall.
The
next gauntlet to face was Christmas. The foreboding thoughts began as soon as
the last leftover turkey was tucked away in the Tupperware containers. The day
after Thanksgiving meant a 1 ½ hour ride home and more time to think. I did not
much feel like listening to songs about Frosty the Snowman or phrases about
“peace on earth.” For Dad and me this was not a season of peace, it was a
season of anxiety attached to an unknown future. Then I passed some familiar
sites. The stand where Mom carefully selected our Christmas tree. A shopping
center were Mom spent endless hours scouting out just the right gifts for
family and friends. Our church where we celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ
who came to make it possible to have eternal life and have a home in heaven.
The thought, “Have a home in heaven,” echoed again in my mind. Then it came to
me. While dad and I were consumed with our grief, Mom was joyously enjoying her
home in heaven. Could I somehow enter into her joy?
That
thought began to adjust some of my thinking as I went through the grieving
process. I still missed Mom deeply. However, I began to challenge my grief with
the hope that Christ made possible at Christmas. He came so that we could “have
life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). Jesus said previously in the
verse that the thief, probably alluding to the Devil, “comes only to steal and
kill.” The one who died for me, Jesus Christ, wants me to enjoy an abundant
life and fullness of joy (John 15:11). Why then should I allow myself to
“sorrow as others who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Such thinking only
allows the “thief to come in and steal” what Christ came to offer to people as
the angels announced, “Peace on earth, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14).
On
December 1, 1969, I set up a Christmas tree. It was probably the ugliest
Christmas tree that was ever in our house. Picking trees was Mom’s expertise!
The tree reminded me not only of Mom’s joy at Christmas, but also the joy she
was enjoying in heaven right then. Suffering can easily steal our joy on earth,
unless we focus upon the gift of eternal life that can never be taken away
(Romans 6:23). Christ offers that to us and those who also have accepted Him by
faith. That first Thanksgiving and Christmas were tough without Mom. My sorrow
was tempered, however, by hope.
Decades later at Thanksgiving, I
still miss Mom. My thinking however has been transformed by hope. I thank God
for every remembrance of her, and rejoice that she has all these years been
enjoying her home in heaven and will for all eternity. Now at Thanksgiving I
remember Mom with gratitude as God’s gift to our family and her friends and I
give thanks. Then in amazement I recall, she is but one of the manifold
blessings from God. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
