Tag Archives: grief

July 4, 2015 · 1:04 pm

July 4, 1970

45 years ago, on a blistering Saturday in Delaware, a very young Clinton Yoder married an even younger Frieda Mishler.  Pictures of that day show a groom sweating so much that his hair is wet and not even properly in place. The bride is demure in a simple, long white dress There was no air conditioning in Greenwood Mennonite Church at that time.  I don’t remember much about that day except how hot it was.

These years have passed, as years are wont to do.  The young love gave way to carefully pondered choices that made for stability and strength and influence and opportunity.  Rocky at times?  Yes.  He was the proverbial stick in the mud and careful.  She was fire and adventure. But the bond they forged stood the tests of time and one hard day in late October, it finished strong.

Today he remembers.  This past week he has stirred around in his empty house and felt the sorrow heavy as his compounded grief settled hard on his heart.  Last night he went to his daughter’s house where he will be gathered to his family, loved on by the people who are his because of her, and they will talk of a Wife and a Mom and a Mimi whose first absence on this July 4th “Day of Celebration” will be keenly felt.

I don’t know why she had to go so soon.  I feel my brother’s sadness multiplied by the events of these past weeks, and hear a dirge rattling in my head that wants to quell the reminders of victory and joy and eternal life.

It’s not a blistering hot day Delaware today.  There is a promise of rain, and it feels like a good day to weep for losses and to do some serious grieving.  I sit at the counter in my well-lit kitchen, and talk to my sister and write and think and see the flowers outside my window moving in the breeze.  A Blue Jay lights on the woodpecker block and the blackbirds fight at the platform feeder.  I need to get groceries and the household is stirring around me.  Everyday banality in the face of grief that helps to occupy my hands and divert my heart.

There is so much to be grateful for in the mundane.

I will choose to be grateful, too, for the memories that comfort, the promises that sustain, and even the calamitous grief that won’t always hurt this much.  It is penance done for love.  And having someone to love is still a best gift.

My heart gives grateful praise.

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June 23, 2015 · 8:31 pm

Mama Day

Over the last few years, when I would get my new calendar for the year, I would go through the months and on every Tuesday, I would write, “Mama Day.”  I wanted it firmly in place so that whenever there were things that I needed to do, I could say, “Not Tuesday.  That is my day to go to my mother’s house.”  We often planned her appointments on that day so that I wouldn’t need to take another day out of my week, but most of the time, we spent Tuesdays together in her house beside the nursing home on Yoder Drive.

I honestly cannot say how long I have gone to her house one day a week, but I know that I started it sometime after Daddy’s death ten years ago.  I had tried to get out there without a set schedule at first, but I found that I just didn’t make it unless we had a set day.  At first, it seemed like Wednesday worked best, but as time went on, and I found things jammed up on Wednesday from small group meetings and other mid week activities, we agreed on Tuesday as the day that would be best.

“I don’t care which day you come,” she would often tell me, “but I get such a wonderful feeling inside when I realize that you are going to be there the next day.”  She never ever acted like it was something she took for granted, but she was always so disappointed when something came up to interfere that I decided early on that there was almost nothing worth making her sad.  Tuesday mornings I would often dash into Rite Aid for a prescription, on to Wal-Mart for a few groceries and some OTC meds and other supplies, then out to Mama’s house for the business of paying bills, organizing the medication box, and conversation and companionable silence.  Usually I would be at the kitchen table, and she would be in on her recliner.  In the last year and a half, she would often be sleeping in her chair, sometimes reading, sometimes talking on the phone, but always, always trying to make conversation with me, apologetic for being so sleepy, interested in any community news that she might have missed.

“Do you know anything new?” she would ask me almost every time I talked to her.  I would scramble over the news and try to think of something that she would be interested in.  It got so that I would listen for news that would be the kind of thing she would be interested in.  Where the newlyweds of the community were going to live.  What was growing in the garden already.  How Daniel had installed an irrigation system in the pavilion for my hanging plants.  How the last flock of chickens did.  Who had bought a new car.  What the grandchildren had said lately.  Who was or wasn’t at church on Sunday.  Who in the community was sick.  What our adult children were up to.  Sometimes the pickin’s were slim, but she always wanted to know.

She loved the Daily Guideposts, and kept all of her yearly editions.  When she got the new edition in the fall, she would read the short biographies in the back and catch up on all the long-standing authors’ lives.  She felt like she knew each one, and if she learned that they were sick, or if one of them died, or got divorced or had family problems, she felt deeply for them.  I would often come in and find editions from years back stacked up on her little chairside table, and she would talk to me like they were one of her family.

She loved to read.  Recently she was working her way through the whole “Love Comes Softly” series by Janette Oke.  When she found there was a sequel series, she wanted those to read.  She was in the middle of reading A Searching Heart when she had her fall.  A strip of paper, torn from some advertisement or magazine marked her place on page 115.  Often Middle Daughter was responsible for finding and bringing reading material to her.  Some authors just didn’t hold her interest.  “I just couldn’t get into that book (or author)” she would say ruefully.  “I hope Deborah won’t care, but I just didn’t like it too much.”  And once the opinion was formed, it was seldom changed.

The last five weeks have really run together for this Delaware Grammy, and even though Mama was in the hospital, I still tried to keep Tuesdays as her day.  Last week, Youngest Sister, Alma, needed to trade with me because she had something to do later in the week and wanted to be free.  It was afternoon when I decided that whether it was my day or not, I was going to go.  And thus, I got to spend the last seven hours of her life with her. She went home to Heaven on what my calendar says was a “Mama Day.”

Last night I was thinking about this morning, and planning my day.  I suddenly remembered that I didn’t have to go to Mama’s House today.  I mentally thought about the morning and things that needed doing and decided that I could still be doing things for Mama today.  And so, I have been working on the business of closing accounts, organizing some papers, reading some of the cards, and remembering a Mama who loved Tuesdays with all her heart and wasn’t afraid to let me know that she wanted me to come.

And I’ve spent some time very teary as well.  I expect that Tuesdays will be easier for me on many accounts, but harder on others.  I won’t be dashing out for prescriptions, groceries or supplies then hurrying to get to her house before too late.  But on every single square on the remaining Tuesdays of this year there is the notation, “Mama Day,” and I think this pang will always remind me of a loss that is too big for me to comprehend at this point.

When Daddy died, I had no idea of how things were going to be in the months that followed.  “We hadn’t had time to miss him yet,” said Youngest Sister one day when I was so confused by how the grief just seemed to get deeper and deeper.  I think of those words now and think about what may be ahead for me, for us.  Mama missed the woman she had been in her youth — the vibrancy, the strength, the abilities, the talents that shone.  And while we have missed the Mama that she once was, nothing could have prepared me for the finality of these days.

She won’t be coming back.

How dark this Tuesday seems without her.

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June 21, 2015 · 8:34 pm

On This Rainy Night

It was such a wonderful day.  The friends who came, the people who served by setting up, cooking, serving the wonderful food, those who were still cleaning up when we finally went home, all of these kind people gave us an inestimable gift.  They extended comfort in the form of memories, hugs, encouraging words and assurances of their prayers.

Tonight, at home, with some of the things (I felt) needed to be done finally finished, I sit in the comfortable circle of my family, some of the dear faces missing, some still here for awhile.  I feel bone weariness, soul weariness, and the sub-conscious grief that tugs at my heart.  I haven’t really had time to think clearly about much.

Today we buried my Mama.  I looked at her face before closing the casket for the last time, and put my cheek against her cold one, and told her once again, “Oh, Mama.  You were such a good Mama.  I will always miss you.”  And I know I will.

And then the rest of the day was a blur.  There was lots of music, and there were so many people.  Our cousins from both sides of our big family sang songs that brought back a thousand memories and gave me hope and comfort.  My brothers, nephews, a niece, a son, a daughter and a family friend all worked together and the essence of my Sweet Mama was captured in the laughter and the tears and the words of Eternal Life. Six grandsons carried her gently to the final resting place and another grandson spoke the final familiar words while we sang songs of triumph that exalted in the face of the loss that I could not think about.  And then, we covered the grave.  My mama’s body, the shell of the woman who gave birth to me, was at rest.  I shall never see that form of my Mother again.

Tonight, I sit in this comfortable circle and a sturdy thunderstorm has moved in.  It has rumbled and crashed.  The lightening has flashed, and the rain has poured down in buckets.  I think of that fresh grave and think of the rain pouring down and wonder about the dirt that our family carefully piled in and around and over the vault until it was full and even with the ground.  I think of my Sweet Mama’s body, there under the earth and wonder if the vault is waterproof.

And then I feel that searing, desperate grief as I think of the natural decay of the body that I knew as my Mama’s.  I think of the damp trickling in, and the pretty dress and carefully combed hair and even the perfume that we spritzed on her neckline when we did her hair, and I suddenly want it all undone. I sit in my chair, alone and quiet in my sorrow while I finally have time to think about how this all is, and the tears just won’t stop.  She hated to be wet and cold.  She hated to be alone.  She hated the dark.

I need to stop.  I need to find comfort and I need to think differently.

And then, clear as an angel’s chime, I hear my Sweet Mama’s voice in my head.  It is December 23, 2005, and we have just buried our Precious Daddy.  And someone asked Mama about how she felt about leaving the grave on that cold December day.

“It really was okay,” she said, even in her deep, deep grief.  “It wasn’t Daddy that we left there.  That was just his shell.  He isn’t there.  It isn’t something that he even cares about.”  And as the months and now years have passed, she has never had the need to go to his grave.  She went very occasionally at first but has long since stopped going.  She just hasn’t had the desire or the need.

I can’t say that I am like that.  I still go to my Daddy’s grave when I am troubled or sad or just missing him so much.  I know he isn’t there, but the physical remains of the Daddy I knew and loved are there, and I am comforted some how.  Mostly I talk to Jesus, but sometimes I will cry out my anguished heart and try to think how he would answer me.  And I know that I will do that some more in these next months.

One of the things that was hard over these last few weeks was that there were times when Mama seemed more reluctant to engage her children than she was (outside the family) friends or even strangers, and I found that so hard until the night that Middle Daughter, our resident Hospice nurse stopped me on my way out the door to go to Mama’s side.  I was so sad and confused and weary that night. I had just asked my husband to please pray for me, and he had held me gently and prayed for wisdom and strength and courage.  Most of all, I hated it that I was dreading the time with my Mama.  But Deborah stopped me.  She hugged me and she said something like this:

“Mama, you need to remember that Grandma’s emotions are still on ‘this side.’  She knows that she is slipping away and she is deeply grieving the separation from her beloved children. She cannot yet see Heaven and all the Glory that is waiting for her there, so she is living still with the emotions of this world.  And engaging with you all is a reminder to her of all she’s going to part with, and it is just too hard.  Don’t take it personally, and don’t think she is cutting you out.  She is just working through this business of leaving, and there is no set way that this happens. She loves all of us intensely.  She loved living so much and with the emotions from this life, all of this is probably giving her a deep, deep sense of grief.”

That helped me so incredibly much to believe that God would work in all or our lives to stay focused and steady and working towards the time when she could go HOME. That the less I expected or asked of her, the more she could concentrate on that other world.  It could be our gift to her in this time when it felt our hearts would break.  Truly a sacrifice of praise.  And so, we did.  We kept our heads and hearts where we knew that our Heavenly Father’s care could hold us tenderly and we found Him faithful, and our Mama did not disappoint us.

And tonight, Mama’s emotions are all on the other side.  She is home free.  She is not thinking about a deserted grave in a dark cemetery or the rain or the ones she left behind.  She’s alive and free and timeless and full of incredible joy.  The journey to Heaven was but a split second from that last peaceful breath, and she is only beginning this new adventure.

And this aching heart still offers grateful praise.

‘Weep not.  Weep not.  She is not dead!  She’s resting in the bosom of Jesus!”  (James Weldon Johnson)

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April 7, 2015 · 3:01 pm

Of Life and Hope and Frieda and Heaven

It’s the first Easter without her. Somehow the resurrection and the promise of The Eternal comfort me like never before. My brother was here this weekend, moving though our lives with grace, some tears, but also a determination to remember the good. He saw family, laughed and watched the activity that never stops when the Yoders are together, visited with Frieda’s family, fellowshipped with old friends, laughed with his cousins, comforted his aging mother with his presence and his tender care, ate pickled eggs and read old books. He was home, but he wasn’t. Never more than a breath away are the memories, drawing him to another time and another place. So many things to remember. He is a more pensive, gentler version of the man he has been, and though the grief has changed him, it hasn’t made him angry or bitter.

Saturday would have been her birthday. It is strange to mark the day without her. Even as I know that this is the way of LIFE, I hate this death business. Even stranger to me is how we mark a death and rejoice in a resurrection on the same weekend, but live as if we aren’t really paying attention to the fact that we have this hope within us. Most of the time, we don’t want to think about dying.

Tonight, I think of those who are already there, and wonder what they are doing. Has it been a split second for Daddy, these nine years since he crossed over? I just cannot comprehend. Sometimes I think I have to wrap my mind around it somehow. But how can a mere mortal understand Eternity, the very presence of God and His GLORY?

I stopped at my Daddy’s grave last week to think and pray and cry. In the next row, Freida’s gravestone, newly placed sat in its simple beauty. I hadn’t seen it there before, and in that moment I acutely missed the grace and honesty and fire that was my red-haired sister in law. I stepped over to her monument and touched the rough top of it, crying now so hard that I couldn’t see.

“We miss you so much,” I said. “I wish I had told you more often how much I loved you!” And then I went through the sharp Delaware wind to my van and came on home.

Home. My favorite place in all the world to be. Here are the people I love most. Here are the memories and the familiar. But even here there are scary things — medical issues, aging, auto accidents, bills, disappointment and reversal and loss. But when we get to THAT Home — ah, there will be nothing to disappoint, destroy, alarm or regret. There will be all the good and none of the bad. And I believe that the people I love most will be there, with good memories intact and none of the bad.

One time, in a desperately difficult time in my life, I dreamed that my Daddy came to me and he said, “Where I am, relationships are so easy because there are no regrets.” Sometimes that aspect of Heaven lures me more than anything else. And gives me pause to consider how to do relationships here with no regrets.

Brothers and sisters. In these days when we are so often bogged down with the things of living, may we fix our eyes on Jesus, believe His Words to us when He says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will have life even if they die. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die!”

And may we live like we believe it.

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December 28, 2014 · 4:51 am

Christmas in my Heart

It has been an eventful week.  The house is quiet today, for the first time in four days.  The four grands are precious, indeed.  They are smart, cute, verbal, affectionate and engaging.  They are not quiet.  I remember how I wanted so badly to play the piano at my Grandma Wert’s house and how My Sweet Mama always (and I do mean always) said “No.  It will get on Grandma’s nerves!”  It made me almost frantic to put my fingers on it and make a glorious noise.  However, I knew better than to disobey.

Here I am, 61 years old, with four grandchildren.  Three of them are in a family that has a very loud daddy as well as a very musical daddy and here is this Delaware Grammy who isn’t at all anxious for them to try their hands at the piano.  Fortunately for me, it is one (of many) things that their wise parents have made off limits for most of the time.  Actually, this weekend, I don’t know of a single time that they were playing on the piano.  That did not stop the noise and the busy-ness.  Most of the time, the noise was glorious, in that it was not fighting or scolding or screaming or sassing.  It was just little boy and little girl play and little boy and little girl talk and little boy and little girl noise.  How I loved it!

(How I am enjoying this quiet after the storm.)

But that makes me a bit pensive when I think about the silent piano this weekend.  Were their parents sneaking around and shushing them with ,”NO, you may not play the piano!  It will get on Grammy’s nerves!”  I hope not, but I cannot say with any confidence that I KNOW they didn’t use that excuse.

It has been a good season for our family.  We have much to be thankful for, and I rejoice in God’s Gift to the world that long ago night.  A Savior.  Christ the LORD.  Above all else, we followers of Jesus have reason to celebrate.  But I would be less than truthful if I were to act like this season was without its share of pain.  Our world has so much pain.

Last night, I gathered the grands around me one by one and we picked out gifts from the Compassion, Int. Christmas catalog.  Charis was first. She is the oldest at 5.  She wanted the children to have some thing to play with. “Some toys for the poor children, Grammy!”  She picked out some “safe playground equipment.”

Simon, although younger than Charis by almost six months, is also 5.  He crowded in beside me and thoughtfully looked at the pictures.  He was extremely saddened by the picture of the little boy, obviously malnourished, eating rice.  It was one of the first pictures in the catalog, and he came back to it, looking with deep concern at the little guy.  It didn’t take him long at all to decide that his part of the gift would be food for hungry little kids.

“Don’t let nobody else get that,” he said.  “Just me.”

“Well, Simon,” I said to him, “Let’s just see what the others want to do.  I have a feeling that all of you will want something different.”  And he was good with that.

Liam (4) was very serious as he looked and looked at the possibilities.  He wrinkled his face and thought long and hard.  He finally chose seeds for growing vegetable gardens.  “I like seeds,” he said happily.  “I help Mommy in the garden and plant seeds.”  Which, I found out later, is one of his favorite summer things to do.

And then Frankie.  He’s three.  A great conversationalist, and always thinking about what he can get into next.  I went through the catalog with him and explained everything.

“I want to buy SCHOOL BUS!!!”  He insisted. I explained patiently that there was no “school bus,” and that these people didn’t even have cars to take them where they needed to go.

“Look, Frankie,” I told him.  “They do have bicycles.”  He looked at the picture that had two people on a bike, with a basket that was full of parcels, while the people also had bags on their backs.

“Dey should put backpack in dere,” said Frankie, pointing at the basket.  “Backpack in dere!”  He studied the picture seriously, considering buying a bicycle over a bus.  Finally, with his Grammy’s encouragement, he was convinced that maybe he would settle for a bicycle, and our choosing/planning session was over. (Whew!  That was a relief.  I was pretty sure that Grammy wasn’t going to be able to afford a school bus!)

And it did this heart good.  The season has carried a great deal of memories for me, of other years and happier times.  On Sunday morning, in our Christmas program, the carols and Christmas hymns swirled around me, making it difficult to sing as the poignant memories flooded my heart.  Probably the setting we were in had something to do with it.  Daddy and Mama started attending at Laws Mennonite Church when I was two years old.  With the exception of the ten years we spent in Ohio, every single Christmas program has been in that church.  And though I know we have much for which to be grateful, and the accommodations are pleasant and adequate, it just isn’t the same.  And I was homesick for the old white church on the corner of Canterbury and Carpenter Bridge roads.

Especially sharp this year was the missing of people who have gone on before.  As we launched into “Silent Night” there was this pause at the end of the first line — at a place where J.R. Campbell always added an extra bass trill.  I waited, half expecting to hear that clear, full voice chime in the extra notes.  But there was nothing.  And no one filled in for him.  It made me think about J.R. and the essence that was so uniquely him and while my thoughts were those of thankfulness to him for his foresight and careful attention to detail that has blessed us so immensely as a church in this fire, I missed him!  The music, the laughter, the philosophizing, the attention to detail, the artist, the dreamer.

And I missed my Daddy.  It was nine years ago that he went home to Heaven on a night that we had a Christmas program.  It was the Sunday night of December 18th, 2005.  I had taken him to the hospital in the morning, and they admitted him.  He thought they would take some fluid off his lungs and he would go home.  When they admitted him, he encouraged Mama and I to go home.  There was the Christmas program, and he didn’t want us to miss it.  Shortly after we were in the service, a phone started ringing somewhere.  I was aggravated that someone wasn’t paying closer attention to their cell phone, but it stopped and we were singing the carols of Christmas when someone came and got me and said that my Daddy wasn’t expected to live through the night.  We got to the hospital in record time and soon after 9 pm, he smiled his last smile, breathed his last breath and went on home.

I always think about it, but it has been harder this year.  Maybe because of losing Frieda so recently.  Maybe because of other losses in my family.  Maybe because My Sweet Mama’s health is so precarious.  For whatever reason, it has been a little tougher this year than sometimes.

But for all that has been difficult, I’ve still have it so good.  I have enough food to fill the tummies.  I can grow a garden from a vast variety of seeds or little plants.  My trusty mini-van isn’t dependent on me pedaling it to get it anywhere, and the children have safe recreational activities available on all sides.

There is hope for the hollow, empty eyes.

I am only one, but I am one.  I cannot do everything but I can do something.  The something I can do, I ought to do. And by God’s grace, I will.

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October 28, 2014 · 10:37 pm

. . . and she is Finally Home!

A call from my brother, and the words:  “Frieda is in Heaven!”

At 5:50 she winged her way Heavenward, easy and quiet, while her loved ones kept watch.  Brave, brave woman.  How very much she will be missed.

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October 26, 2014 · 8:50 pm

Keeping Vigil/Cheering Frieda Home

Sixteen days ago, the voice was lilting and full of joy.  She eagerly looked forward to being in Heaven and was unafraid.  She is still looking forward to Heaven and is unafraid.  But she is very, very sick and that voice is almost non-existent.  She still knows her family and when she can, she has words for them.

The breaths are ragged and disorganized.  They catch my brother’s heart and wrench it.  He tends to her lovingly and tries to pray.  The words stick in his throat, and he feels so helpless.  If a heart breaking could be measured in decibels, the atmosphere would be shattered.

Ah, dear friends, how  very much he needs your prayers.  They all do — Clint, Shana, Doug, Juliana and Steven, Chip, Susan, Hannah and Clinty.  And Frieda.  Pray that her faith will soon be sight; that her suffering could cease; that she would hear the Angels singing and that death could be swallowed up in Victory.   Soon and very soon.

. . . and this for my beloved brother.

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October 16, 2013 · 3:16 am

Thoughts on this October day

I turned 60 today.

I don’t quite know how I got this old this quickly.  I don’t understand how this person who feels like myself is trapped in this body that the calendar says is 60.  I’ve never minded the passing of years, to be honest with you.  But maybe I just never took time to think about the sand in the hourglass and how it would, some day, run out.  I look at the years that lie behind me and realize, with the proverbial jolt, that the years ahead are far, far less than all those happy years that I’ve already lived.

Today has been such a happy day.  Each one of my siblings wished me a happy birthday.  My far away Oldest Brother and Middle Brother called, as did Youngest Brother.  I saw Youngest Sister at Sweet Mama’s this morning and talked to Middle Sister on the phone this afternoon.  And all the offspringin’s and the ones they love have called or texted or visited.  I have a little grandson in Ohio who shares my birthday, and I even talked to him on the phone tonight.  It has been a glorious day.

I’ve done some thinking this week about many things.  It’s been a season of missing my Daddy rather intensely.  I cannot always say why things sit heavy on our hearts at particular times, but it seems to me, after what is now the eighth summer without him, that the one thing that triggers it for me is putting the garden to rest for the season.  Certain Man has been taking down “them thar tomato thingies” and mowing off the spent vegetable plants.  I gathered the peppers and green tomatoes last week and made hot dog relish.  The few ripe tomatoes got put into a few last quarts of juice.

But the pole limas are still standing.  Yesterday, I picked what I am pretty certain is my last big picking from the twenty three plants that made it through this summer.  They have done exceptionally well this year.  When I finished the last bags for the freezer last night, I realized that I have seventy 3-cup bags in the freezer from this summer.  I’ve done them along, four bags here, six bags there, and a time or two there has been ten.  Wonderfully tender, vibrant green, and so, so good.  I am so grateful for the way the bags have added up this summer.

It is the eighth summer without our Dad.  When Daddy died in December of 2005, there were so many things that were the essence of him that we knew we could never replicate, never replace.  The man he was, and his influence on our lives.  His prayers.  His vibrant interest in each of us, and his steady encouragement.  We really can do nothing to fill in these spaces that were left when God called him home to Heaven.

But there were other things that we could do.  I could grow lima beans.  At least I thought I could.  I honestly didn’t know very much about it, seriously had no idea how much WORK was involved, but decided that it would be one way that I could maybe feel close to this man who was so HUGE in my life and was suddenly so gone.  Maybe I was somehow trying to capture a tangible part of Mark Yoder, Sr., and make it my own.  Certain Man was more than willing for me to try, and in the summer of 2006, at my request, he built the pole, wire and twine lattices for two rows of beans.  He asked for advice and got healthy plants from the experts.  He did the planting and the weeding and slowly the plants grew and blossomed and began growing beans.

I was impatient for beans.  The first ones I picked made barely a cup in the smallest pan I had.  They were so good, and Certain Man and I shared them, delighted with the first fruits of our labor.  Then I checked and rechecked and finally decided that I could actually do a real picking.  I think I got a basket.  They were little and piddly and wonderful flavor, but clearly not ready.  I’ve thought so much about that summer as I’ve picked big, full pods of limas off of my plants this year.  The truth was, when I barely got anything in those first pickings, I grew more and more discouraged.  My grief was so deep and terrible, and when I was in the bean patch, I missed Daddy with an ache that often had me wiping tears on my sleeves as I searched for the beans.  I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I had to feel each bean to see if it was ready, and the task seemed interminable.  I found myself more and more just staying out of the patch, not thinking about the passing of the days.

And then we had a hard, killing frost.  The leaves on the bean vines shriveled and died and the pods that I had never picked hung brown on the vines.  It looked like thousands of pods; good, good lima beans that had gone to waste.  I hated the sight so much.  Certain Man finally took them down, put the garden to rest, and I didn’t have to look at them anymore.  I didn’t know if I could even try to raise limas again.

Certain Man is not a man who allows me to wallow.  He understands grief.  He’s certainly had his share, and honest emotions are treated with gentle kindness.  But he dislikes moping almost as much as he likes lima beans.  And he had built those really good supports and I’m not sure he even asked me the next year if I wanted to have pole limas or not.  Had he asked, though, I probably would have said “yes.”  Spring always does that to me, and there is a hope and a deep belief that this year things will go better than they ever have, that the garden will stay weed-free, that there will be not produce left go to waste, and that no one will resent anything that might grow there.  Anyhow, Certain Man planted limas again in the summer of 2007 and things went a whole lot better.

Each year I think I’ve gotten more comfortable with our patch of beans.  I often think of Daddy while I’m out there picking, but I seldom need my sleeve for more than wiping sweat off my face.  The memories are warm and good and they often make me smile when I remember the man who probably picked thousands of bushels of lima beans in his time.  I remember his eyes and the laugh lines around them.  I remember the way he would sit on his chair and shell beans with drive and attention.  I think about how he liked to get a pan for the grandchildren and rope them into helping.  I remember his delight in a pot of lima beans, made by Sweet Mama, exactly the way he liked them, and the way he could put them away at a meal.

There are life lessons here, I know, and over the summer, there have been many life applications for this old gal that came from the bean patch.  But on this night, of the milestone birthday and realizing that Dad only had 16 years left when he was my age, and thinking about being faithful in small things and leaving memories behind us, and how, no matter how much people may want us to stay and think they need us, we don’t really have a choice as to when God calls us home– all these things somehow feel like they really have to do with the lessons I’ve learned in two rows of pole limas in a small garden patch on a Delaware Poultry farm.

Common, ordinary days that are touched with Heaven.

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