by jphilo | Aug 31, 2023 | Family
Labor Day weekend will be different this year. For as long as I can remember the holiday was more about celebrating my mother’s birthday than celebrating laborers. Then again she was born on September 3, which was Labor Day in her birth year of 1928. Which means her birthday was and will always be a celebration of labor, though not of laborers.
Because Mom’s birthday usually occurred during a three day weekend, it often coincided with gatherings of our extended family. Though Labor Day weekend will be different this year, that much will remain the same. Our annual cousins’ reunion––there are 39 of us, a number that swells quickly when you throw in our spouses and descendants–– will be held the day before Mom’s birthday.
This year will be quite different in other ways. Mom left this world on June 23 and will not be with us in body on her birthday. Then again, our memories of her and of her seven siblings who waited patiently for her to join them in heaven, will be present in full force. We will tell our family stories. We will share favorite memories of our parents. They were all farmers and housewives and teachers, remarkable people though not well-known outside our circle and never, never showy.
Since some of my cousins weren’t able to attend Mom’s celebration of life, I will take the memory book the funeral home compiled for them to see. I’ll also bring the scrapbook, filled with photos of our parents and their parents, which I made the year Mom turned 80. How can that be 15 years ago? I will also take the birthday cake she loved best, homemade German chocolate cake. Not the cupcake version on the chocolate bar pictured above, but the traditional version pictured below. The cake is delicious, moist and very big. A good thing in an extended family as large as ours.
My piece will probably be on the salty side, not because I have a heavy hand with that ingredient, but because I will be crying as I eat. My tears will be good. Sad. Joyful. Healthy. I expect them to flow freely as my cousins who knew and loved Mom teach me what they already know. She, like their parents who went before her, is alive and well in our hearts.
Happy birthday, Mom, from all of us.
In loving memory of Dorothea Lorraine Stratton
September 3, 1928-June 23, 2023
by jphilo | Feb 1, 2016 | Church Newsletter Columns
We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day;
night is coming when no one can work.
While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.
John 9:4–5
Hiram and I are back from visiting family in Arizona. The weather was perfect, and knowing we’d escaped the sub-zero temperatures in Iowa made it feel even better. Part way through the week, my sister and I road-tripped to southern California to visit an elderly relative. I’ll spare you the description of our barefoot walk on a sunny beach in January the morning after we arrived, and skip straight to Muriel, the elderly relative.
She’s 87, sharp as a tack, and an amateur historian who has researched and compiled the story of her grandfather (my great-great-grandfather) during the Civil War. But, her sight is failing rapidly, as is her stamina and mobility. All three of us knew this might be our last visit together, so our hugs were extra long and hard when we said good-bye. Muriel was still waving when our car turned the corner. Leaving her was hard, but she is a woman of deep faith, not afraid of walking through the door from this life into the next.
The Monday after Hiram and I returned to cold and snowy Iowa, an email arrived from a friend in a nearby town. She’s also a writer, and I thought she was confirming the let’s-talk-about-writing coffee date we’d scheduled. Instead, this active, fit mom of three boys (ages 8–13) wrote to cancel because she had just been diagnosed with cancer. She and her husband hoped to know more after meeting with the doctor later in the week. Her note ended with these words. “We’re trying to just do the normal life things, and trust that God knows what he’s doing. I don’t doubt him. I really don’t. I don’t like what he’s doing, but I don’t doubt him.”
The tears that never came while saying good-bye to Muriel fell hard and fast after hearing from my young, talented, and very dear friend. My heart broke for her husband, for her sons, for the fight she faces, and for the words she will not be writing during her treatment. Even though my friend and I are certain of the glory waiting for her if she loses her fight, I am praying she will live to see her boys become men and husbands and fathers, and to experience the joy of being a grandma before she walks through that door.
Like Muriel and my young friend, I don’t doubt what God is doing. I know that though his thoughts are not my thoughts and his ways are not my ways, he can be trusted. I know we pay more attention to God’s voice when health fails and life grows short. We better understand his truths when we realize our days on this earth are numbered. The work he has for us to do on this side of death’s door will end.
When death draws near for those we love, we finally comprehend the truth God whispers into the ears of all his children. “Work as long as it is day. Night is coming when no man can work.” As we cry out to him in our grief and through our tears, we realize that our time on earth is precious and finite. And we redouble our efforts and redeem the time by doing his work with passion and purpose. Until the day he calls each of us to walk through the door of this world into the next.
by jphilo | May 15, 2015 | Family
This post that first appeared in May of 2008 speaks for itself. Uncle Ralph, you are dearly missed.
On Sunday, the swiftness of death and the uncertainty of life touched me twice. Mom called after lunch with the news of her brother’s death. His son had called Saturday and said Ralph was failing. “Within a week,” he said. We thought we had a few days.
But Ralph didn’t mess around. He died like he lived – fast and full-steam ahead. The swiftness of his passing surprised but didn’t shock us. After all, he was in his late eighties and had lived a good life. Once we received funeral details, we crowded a trip to Minnesota into the upcoming week’s plans and moved on.
In the evening, my husband and I helped at a graduation party for our friends’ daughter. During the festivities, word came that a tornado had destroyed a high school in Parkersburg, where the uncle and aunt of the graduate teach. Next we heard seven people had died in the storm. Then word spread that some of the deaths occurred at graduation parties. No one said the words, but we read them in one another’s eyes. It could have been here. It could have been us.
This morning I walked down our road. The grass glittered, washed clean by gentle rain in the night. The birds sang. The trees swayed gently in the breeze. The first iris bloomed in the ditch. The lilac branches drooped under the weight of blossoms at the height of beauty. Tomorrow, they’ll begin to fade. If the wind comes up, they’ll be gone.
I did the only thing I could in the face of the fading beauty of this life and the swiftness of death to come. Today, I smelled the lilacs.
by jphilo | Jan 19, 2015 | Family
In the past 7 days, I helped Mom move into assisted living on Monday, traveled to Wisconsin on Tuesday to help out with the our 2-year-old grandson and brand new granddaughter until Saturday, and joined our church Connection Group on Sunday afternoon to make 32 pans of scalloped potatoes and ham for an upcoming fundraiser.
After a week in the whirlwind, I am home alone today.
Catching up on neglected tasks.
Sitting in my comfy chair writing.
Reflecting on the many changes our family has undergone in a few short weeks.
2 moments stand out amongst the tornado of moments that swirled around and above and under and through my heart in 7 short days. The first moment came after my brother and I had moved Mom’s furniture, arranged her room, and returned to take her to her new home. When I announced it was almost time to leave and asked her to wait until I was done in the bathroom. While I was otherwise occupied, Mom grabbed her walker and headed out the door.
A few minutes later,
I found her in the garage,
standing in the 7 degree weather,
waiting to begin her new life with the grit and determination that is her hallmark.
The second moment came during my Wisconsin sojourn. I was sitting in the rocking chair holding our newborn granddaughter while her mommy spent some time with her big brother. I looked down at this little one’s tiny perfect face, felt the soft rise and fall of her breathing against my chest, and breathed in her sweet baby aroma. And there, in the center of a month marked by the gale force change, a calm descended upon my windblown heart.
Time evaporated,
my heartbeat slowed,
my body relaxed,
and I thanked God for wrapping my arms around the gift on my granddaughter’s new life.
by jphilo | Nov 15, 2013 | Family
The call came last week. Lois Benson, Mom’s oldest sister, had died. She’d been failing for several months, so the news wasn’t unexpected. But it was unwanted by those of us left behind. But I suspect, as do others who loved her, that Lois was not sad to go. Not after enduring cruel losses in her immediate family.
The loss of her son Gary shortly after his high school graduation.
The loss of her son, Vernie, who was a young husband and the father of 3 little girls.
The loss of her husband Ivar in the 1990s.
The loss of her great-grandson Spencer a few years ago.
Gary died when I was five, and her sad smile laces my early memories of this dear woman. Her smile grew achingly, heart wrenchingly sad seven years later when Vernie died. But this is what I will always remember about Aunt Lois: though the smiles grew more fleeting and rare with each loss, she never stopped smiling.
When she talked about her faith, she smiled hopefully.
When she talked about her hobbies, handiwork and baking (if you never tasted one of Aunt Lois’s pies or traditional Norwegian baked treats, you are to be pitied), her smile was animated and bright.
When she talked about the accomplishments of her living children and her grandchildren, she positively beamed.
Today, as our family gathers together to say good-bye to Lois Benson, we will all be hoping and imagining the reunion:
Aunt Lois smiling without a hint of sadness.
Rejoicing to see Gary, Vernie, Ivar, and Spencer once again.
Her Savior leaning down to wipe her tears away.
Her faith fulfilled. Her hope secured.
Oh, Aunt Lois, we will miss you. But knowing you are home again makes us smile…but sadly.
And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.
Revelation 21: 4
