These Are My JOTtings...

Tribute to Mom

Life would not be possible with Mom to carry her babies to term.
Life would be questionable without Mom to care for her babies through infancy
and the growing and searching toddler years.
Life would be unloving without Mom to shepherd the emotions of her babies into adulthood.

In every way life would be less without a loving Mom.

Though she could not tell me the same, I have a sense that the reason Mom stayed with us as long as she did was that she could not bear the thoughts of leaving her boys without in the world.

Finally, toward the end I kept reminding her, "Mom! It's okay. My brother and I will be alright. Jesus will take care of us. You don't have to stay for us any more." At other parts of that last hour I would ask, "Mom, do you see Jesus, yet? He coming for the little girl. It's to go play with Him in His meadow."

Now, this brings us to the day of the funeral. Mom is not stored in a box. Mom is released to be more fully herself, more full alive than she has ever been. Mom left us her earthly suit of clothes. The funeral and the burial are merely the proper honoring of the coat she left us to store away until she needs it again. We will not be putting our loving Mother, sister, aunt, cousin, friend in the ground. No! A thousand times No! We will be storing away her suit in a chifforobe. When The Lord comes back again, Mom and Dad will return to their chifforobes to don the new suits that The Lord has properly recreated, fully cleaned & pressed into a life of eternal service.

John 3:16 and "Jesus Loves Me" are my inheritance. By age three or four I could recite both from memory thanks to her diligence and that of Dad as well.

Now, on the lighter side Mom had some things in life that "gave her pause." Nothing challenged her more than acrophobia (or the fear of heights.) Some may remember Mom's rollercoaster story. I heard it often throughout my youth, especially when the subject of airplanes came up in conversation. It went something like this. "Once, I let somebody convince me to get on a rollercoaster. All the way through that ride, I prayed, 'Lord, if you will let me get off this rollercoaster. I will never get on another rollercoaster for the rest of my life.' Why? Because The Lord said in The Bible, 'Lo! I am with you always.' He didn't say, 'High! I am with you always.' I want The Lord to be with me."

O, did Mom love to laugh!!! Mom has such a joyful heart! I am quite sure that is the reason that for me at least the sadness of her absence is overshadowed by the Joy of knowing that Mom has been released to laugh, to love, to express Joy and to communicate like she has not be able to do in many years.

O, does Mom know how to communicate!!! From the sheer volume of words that emanated from Mom in her prime, one wonders how my brother and I ever had enough open spaces to learn how to talk. On the other hand one may surmise that because of her example, Brother and I, too, are quite verbose, we are each writers, and we have each emphasized the English language as the bulk of our teaching careers.

"2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, 3 and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:2-4, AKJV)

Mom lived these verses. Sure Mom could handle adult responsibilities better than many adults, but when it came to showing her true self. That self was a child! When she had day off, (usually Saturday during the school year,) she might take time to check the credit card "open-to-buy" or just plow on head without looking, but the day would start with a thought in some form, "Boys, we get to have FUN, today!" We always had to pay for it later, but on that day she wanted to be pampered because she a little child's heart that wanted to PLAY!

Mom has always been the most like a child around Christmas every year. When I was a child I quickly picked up on how much Mom (and Dad, too,) loved Christmas. Often it was early in November I would ask Mom if I could begin playing the Christmas albums. It was consistently, "Sure, Son, you go right ahead!" Not only the music but the flavors of Christmas showed her childlike attitude. I remember Georgia Pralines, which was globs of the mixture of peanuts, chow mein noodles along with butterscotch and butter to hold the mixture together. Oranges were in the stockings every year as I recall. Cinnamon sticks were placed on plates to simply paint the air with the aroma of Christmas. Pine-scented candles were usually in the mix, too.

Just like Jesus, Mom loves children. I am convinced this is the reason she was a great elementary school teacher for more than four decades as I recall. Having a childlike heart herself, she treated all of her children with great respect, calling them, "Sir" and Ma'am." I know this because I watched her during some of my breaks from college. If I wanted to spend much time with Mom, I often had to go to school with her.

It gives me great comfort to think of Mom as her renewed playful self, who is all aspects must appear to be much younger than I look today.

Finally, Mom's lasting sermon on how to live life to its fullest potential finds its sum in the words she wrote in the front of the Bible she and Dad gave me on Christmas Day, when I was 21 years old. "Because we love you and your brother and know both of you love God so much we give you this His Word. We know you will always cherish it and proclaim His Word with it. It is with much love that God has given to us for you that we present this Bible to you. This book will keep you from sin, but sin will keep you from this book. May God always bless you. Love, Mother & Daddy"