Category Archives: Aging

Stories in Stone

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Today I got to do something I’d always wanted to do. While visiting Nate’s only sibling, Ken, in western Illinois, I got to visit two small, country cemeteries. My mother-in-law’s life began in a small farm town less than 100 miles from where Nate and his brother were raised, and we went on a mission to trace family history. Ken’s last visit had been 15 years ago, but he remembered where his relatives were buried, so we started there.

The first cemetery was easy to find, just a quick jog off the main road. The other one, more important because it was located next to the family farm we were also hunting for, eluded us. After a discouraging hour, we spotted an elderly man on his porch. It had been 72 years since Ken’s mother had lived in this farm town. Might he know their family name?

I approached him in as non-threatening a way as I could. “We’re looking for a small cemetery and the Kline farm, close enough to town for little kids to ride ponies to school. It’s an impossible question, but we thought you might know.”

He laughed and invited me into his home to meet his wife who said, “Let’s go next door. Wanda is older than us and has lived here all her life. She’ll know.”

And Wanda did. “The Kline farm is one mile over there,” she said, pointing in a direction we thought we’d already traveled. “But the house was recently torn down. It’s mega-farms around here now,” she said, “one farm gobbling up another.” (We learned this rich soil was currently going for $8500 per acre.)

Ken and I thanked them and drove in the direction of Wanda’s finger-point. Sure enough, there was the cemetery where Ken’s great-great grandfather was buried, a Baptist preacher born in 1793. His ancient headstone had been replaced with a new pink granite one, a mystery to us.

While there, I got my wish to read other headstone stories, finding his children and many grandchildren. Nearly half the cemetery markers were for young children, their few years, months and days carved in stone.

 

My mother-in-law had ridden her pony past this graveyard every school day in the 1920’s, along with her 4 pony-riding siblings. As Ken and I stood there, we had countless questions, but the answers are now buried, along with his relatives.

God knows them, though, and he keeps accurate books. A baby buried only 1 year, 5 months and 3 days after being born was just as important to him as the rare person who lived to old age. But more significant was the magnitude of his love for each one, none loved more or less than another.

When those buried there stepped into eternity, it wasn’t the length-of-days that mattered but the divine love that brought them to God.

“This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your
descendants after you.” (Genesis 17:7)

Taking the Lead

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Last week I enjoyed writing about my mom and her mom, thankful for the upright heritage they (and others) left. Judging by worldly standards, Mom was an old lady of 92 who never worked outside her home or accomplished anything of note. Strangers might have said, “Hers was a wasted life.”

But those of us who knew her, know otherwise. Before Mom died, we used to joke she’d have a big funeral, and we were right. The crowds came in droves, filling the large room where her body lay, spilling out into the halls and out the front door.

The funeral director came running to us just before the service began with alarm on his face. Distressed that not everyone had a seat or had even gotten into the room he said, “Why didn’t you tell me!”

What he meant was, “Why didn’t you tell me this woman was popular? We don’t usually see this for old ladies like her!”

As we greeted guests, Mary and I noticed how most were from the generations behind Mom, people our age and younger. These were the “children” she’d loved and influenced throughout her life, loving all of them as her own. Rather than wasting her life, she’d used it for lofty purposes, leaving footprints that led them all to Jesus.

Here’s an important question for each of us still marching along on this side of our funerals: “Where will my footprints lead?”

Steve Green’s song “Find Us Faithful” says,

“As those who’ve gone before us,
Let us leave to those behind us
The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives.”

God gives us a simple but effective way to leave footprints others will find it worthwhile to follow: just track the steps of Jesus.

In Mom’s last year of life, she continually had her nose in a Bible. One day I asked if she’d looked at the biography of Julia Child I’d just given her, or her new book about hymn authors. She said, “Honey, I don’t have any time for those. I’m studying for my finals.”

Despite not owning a trophy case or being written up in periodicals, Mom finished well.

“After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone
And our children sift through all we’ve left behind,
May the clues that they discover and the memories they uncover
Become the light that leads them to the road we each must find.” (Steve Green)

“God called you to do good, even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you. He is your example, and you must follow in his steps.” (1 Peter 2:21)

 

Giving Her All, Part 2 of 2

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After the elderly stranger fell face-down into deep creek water, Mary and I ran to help. But as we arrived, her head lifted above the water, and she began crawling with her heavy garbage bags to the opposite bank.

“Are you all right?” Mary shouted.

“Fine,” she said. “I just need to drip dry.”

Jack had followed her into the water, and when she saw him, she talked to him. “Hey! Get my rake, and bring it to me!” She had dropped the rake during her dunking.

I pulled off my shoes and socks, rolled my pants and crossed the frigid, fast-flowing creek, fishing out her rake on the way. Again she refused my help with her bags, but as she stood, wet from head to toe, she began to talk.

“Many people have been mean to me, from when I was a little girl” she said. “My parents locked me in a room to keep me from hugging Charlie the horse. They were worried I’d get kicked.”

She told stories of her husband and son, both deceased, but assured me they were caring for her from the hereafter, sending signals when they were near her. She described a babysitting job when the doorbell had rung twice, but there was no doorbell. “That,” she said, “was my husband and son.”

“I’m 76 years old now,” she concluded, “and God has always watched out for me.”

She said she lived six miles from the lake and was planning to walk home after she’d stowed her gear. “Six miles?” I said, alarmed, worrying about her being soaked and cold.

“It’s good to keep moving,” she said. “Besides, I’ve had the pneumonia shot, so I can’t catch that.”

As she bent down for her water-logged garbage bags, I reached for one of them, but she wrestled it away. “No. I’ll do this,” she said. Mary, on the other side of the creek (taking phone pictures) worried she might strike me.

Before she left, I asked her name. “Thelma,” she said.

As she shuffled toward the dune, Mary and I bolted for home, hoping to quickly drive back with dry clothes, a bit of food and a six mile lift. When we returned, we walked the dunes, checked the yards and drove the streets. But she had vanished.

Both of us were disturbed for hours after our encounter, wondering what to do or think. We agreed she was an excellent example of perseverance, but toward what end? Scripture praises perseverance, but only when the object of our quest is a worthy one: godly character, or the Lord’s calling, or holy living.

Some people show determination, but not toward wise behavior. Instead they persevere in disobeying God or trying to live independently of him, or they show determination in giving in to sin. That kind of perseverance is rebellion. In Thelma’s case, she had the right idea, but the wrong goal. Working hard is a virtue, but risking drowning for the sake of two garbage bags full of leaves is foolishness.

So how do we know if we’re persevering after a worthwhile cause?

“The one who looks into the perfect law [God’s Word], the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” (James 1:25)