See you Later, Mom

Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love,
    so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives (Psalm 90:14 NLT).

As we do nearly every week, my siblings and our spouses meet for conversation via zoom. For the past year, the oldest sibling, Joyce, has been reading aloud a chapter from our mother’s book. She’s an editor and has worked through the book and reads a chapter each time we meet. It has been good to talk about our past and relive some of those moments growing up. It has given our spouses a window in what our growing up years were like.

All of us without exception, look back at our parents with love and respect. Of course, they weren’t perfect by any means. They raised their voice when frustrated with us. They learned as they raised us. When we rebelled, they took action. When we were young, we were usually spanked for wrong deeds. Later, instead of spankings, privileges were taken away. I think all five of us would agree our parents were fair and treated us equally, although sometimes differently according to our personalities.

My mother, like most of the people who lived during the Depression in our country, knew how to be thrifty. She had a coin purse. Each week, my parents budgeted $20 for groceries. This included any other needs for the household. Clothing, and so on. I often accompanied my mother to the grocery store and watched as she carefully counted out the cash from her coin purse. There always seemed to be enough money to cover expenses but it was because of her careful calculations.  Mom was an excellent seamstress and sewed everything. An excellent cook and baker, Mom made the best dinner rolls, warm and flaky, full of butter, they melted in your mouth. Her house was always neat and clean and she came alongside of us to teach us how to take care of the home. Often, she made me go back and do the job again if it wasn’t done right. She sacrificed so we children could have music lessons. I took violin lessons, and I’m sure Mom took the $2.00 weekly lesson fee out of that coin purse to pay for the lessons. One summer, she picked strawberries to help purchase a dryer so she didn’t have to hang clothes outside to dry in the rainy Pacific Northwest. She was an artist. Alongside my pastor father, she was part of his ministry. Teaching Sunday School, helping other teachers to teach children, directing the choir, teaching women’s classes. She also taught in school, grades first through twelfth. She had a lifetime Washington State Teacher’s Certification.

Mom used her artistry to present Bible stories in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. I never grew tired of the stories she told with pictures—her “chalk talks.” She set up a large easel with an array of thick, colored chalk. When the lights lowered, Mom sketched a scene while music played in the background: a recording of a poem, an inspirational story, or a Bible passage she narrated. Sometimes the scene was a beach, a mountain, or country church in a valley. Or she might depict the Holy Land with stucco square houses, rooftop patios, and palm trees. The pictures would come to life and the audience would “ooh and ahh” as she drew. Then the lights switched off and Mom would turn on the black lights. All of a sudden, the pictures would change from pastels to radiant neons, with lit windows and pathways previously unseen. Mom continued this magical chalk artistry all of her life, even in the retirement home where she lived her last days.

Most of all, my mother loved her Bible. When she was widowed and moved into a retirement home, she always taught a Bible class for the residents. I often helped type up her notes when she wasn’t able to see very well. She knew her Bible so she really didn’t need to see, but having me type her notes helped her remember what she wanted to cover in the next lesson she’d teach.

Wherever we lived, in the parsonage as a pastor’s family, at school as a teacher, as a teacher in women’s Bible studies, or in her last home, a retirement home, Mom was the “queen”. There were many who admired her–and as a youngster, I didn’t understand their admiration–she was just a mom to me. There was a queen-like quality to her. Gracious. Well dressed. A smile on her face. Grateful–for her family, her life, and her God.

There’s so much I haven’t said about my mother, but I know what she’d want to be remembered for most of all. Her spiritual life. I still recall one summer’s morning bursting into my parent’s bedroom where I interrupted my mother on her knees by the bed, praying. I backed away, not asking the question I planned to ask. It was her quiet time with her Lord. She was consistent in her beliefs and I never saw her be anyone but one who wanted to serve her Savior until her dying day.

I was with my mother three days before she died. It was my custom when I visited her every week, to read  my stepson Greg’s sermons. She enjoyed hearing them and on this day, it was about Jesus’ promise of a prepared place in heaven for his believers.

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?  When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.  And you know the way to where I am going.” (John 14 1-4 NLT).

As I read to her the passage and then Greg’s sermon, she responded with  short words of agreement. Sometimes it was “yes” and other times, “amen”. It was a precious time.  I choked as I read the words for somehow, I knew she was close to the end of her ninety-three years. I asked her if she was looking forward to meeting her mother and father–and my dad–and she said she was. I said goodbye, not knowing it would be the last time I’d see her alive. Had I known, I would have spent more time with her. But I didn’t know, and there were things for me to do.

When I received the phone call that my mother wasn’t doing well, I quickly got into my car and drove the twenty minutes or so it took me to get to her group home. She was all dressed up and sitting in her recliner in her room, her head back, eyes closed. I wonder if she was praying when an angel came to her and said, “Rose, it’s time to come home.”

I’ll meet my mother again when God calls me home. It will be good. I know my four siblings would agree with me that our mother was all of the attributes listed in Proverbs 31. Especially the portion of what her  children say:

Do you have memories of your mother? What do you wish you could tell your mother now? What would you say to her? Is your mother still on earth?Perhaps you can take the time to thank her, for giving you life and love. I’m aware some of you may not have the good memories I do of my mother, and I don’t know what to say to you about that, but I think you can be grateful for the life she gave you.

What would you like your own–if you have children–to say to or about you?

Mom with her daughters at her oldest granddaughter’s wedding. She’s in pink–her favorite color.

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