Certain Man got awake in the wee hours of a rainy September Morning and decided that it was time to go home.  All the way home, the cell phone kept ringing and ringing.  His beloved Aunt Lula was dying and the extended family was keeping watch in rural Plain City, Ohio.  He was often pensive, often uncertain as to how the next few days would pan out. He had missed the funeral of his Old Order Amish aunt, Alma Kauffman, less than two weeks before, and though there was really almost no way that he could have gone, the regret that he voiced over and over again was a wrenching in my heart as I realized how much he had given up.  “Lord Jesus, please, could you make a way for him to go to this time?”

We pulled into our driveway on Wednesday afternoon around 12:30, and it was so good to be home in Milford, DE once again.  Home looked so good to both of us, and Certain Man commented about the roses that had come out just since we left.  We (mostly HE) got the car unloaded, and the mail gone through.  The phone rang again, several times, and then the call came.  Aunt Lula had taken her final journey about an hour after we got home.

I wondered what I could say about Aunt Lula that would really say what she was like.  We saw her less than a month ago, stopping by her house on our way to bring Lem home from REACH.  She was not feeling good, but she was upbeat, optimistic and glad to see us.  She was in the final stages of Ovarian Cancer, and she sat on the couch in her house and spoke freely of her soon homegoing.  When I hugged her good-bye I said, “Aunt Lula, when you see my Daddy, tell him I love him and that I miss him.”  She laughed her inimitable laugh.  I could see in her eyes that she really didn’t think she would be thinking about earthly messages when she reached the other side.

Tonight she is there.  In the presence of Jesus.  She has left behind that pain filled body, the inconveniences of pain and morphine and bedpans and hovering relatives.  When she visited our family a few years ago, she stayed at Jess and Chris’s house.  Christina told me that she heard her in the bathroom one day, just talking to herself and laughing over her own private jokes.  That was the way she was, always laughing, always so full of joy.  I thought about her winging her way home yesterday, and could almost hear her chuckle with delight at what was waiting for her there.

Certain Man is on his way to his family.  He was able to get a reservation out of Philadelphia this afternoon at a reasonable price, and he and his oldest sister, Lena, were supposed to arrive in Columbus around the same time.  They were going to rent a car together and go to Plain City this evening.  CM’s flight got cancelled then, because of bad weather, but he caught another flight out, sat in New York City for four hours, but should be on the ground in Columbus, even as I write this.  I haven’t heard because his cell phone was nearly out of battery and he had packed his charger in the luggage that he checked.  Hopefully I will hear soon. 

Tomorrow he will spend at his parents’ house.  His Father has some things that he wants Certain Man to do.  Ralph, (His father) has gotten increasingly feeble over the last year.  He falls often, and is sometimes confused and even incontinent.  His wife has a difficult row to hoe, and the children have tried repeatedly to put into place some things to help ease the load but have been met with resistance.  They may not really understand what it is that will help most, but they have tried hard and they all wish there was a way to connect with their father in meaningful ways.  The extended family has frequently offered grace to these children– first when their mother died when they were all very young (ages 2-11) and then as the years passed and they grew into young adults.  They feel keenly the loss of their Aunts and Uncles, and I am not surprised when the funerals draw them back like magnets to connect with other family members and to remember the days when a smiley, compassionate Aunt Lula helped to care for her grief-stricken brother’s five motherless youngsters.

And now I just talked to him.  He just landed in Columbus, found Lena, and is looking for his luggage.  And I am going to bed.  These days that he is gone hold lots to keep my mind off of missing him so much.  The house is almost never empty, and tomorrow is a Female Yoder Cousin’s sleepover, and I have looked forward to that for a very long time.  I promise you that Certain Man will not be sorry he missed it.  Probably I won’t be sorry he missed it, either.