The trouble with losing a marriage partner is that half of the whole is then missing. We’re usually drawn to a mate who’s got what we lack, which is, of course, the reason for most marital spatting. But maturity and years bring a willingness to let go of unrealistic expectations of each other in categories where the mate isn’t skilled to produce good work.

One Saturday back when we had five children, I had a homemaker’s meltdown. Nate usually worked on Saturdays, preparing for the week to come, but pressures had built at home, and I asked him for help. I spent the week compiling chore lists for the children and for him. My goal was to pass out a list and its accompanying job supplies to each person, then exit to run errands. Later I’d return to find every task completed.

While jangling my keys, I delivered the grand finale to my meltdown. “You people don’t help enough around here, and the place is falling down around us. It’s time to be responsible. Just do what’s on your list and get it done all the way.” Then I left.

One of Nate’s assignments was to hang a clothing bar in a closet for coats and out-of-season clothes. I left him with everything he needed and hoped for the best. Knowing Nate’s skill-set didn’t include a mechanical bent, I wondered how he’d do.

When I returned, the kids, their lists completed child-style, had scattered into the neighborhood, and Nate was cleaning the kitchen. He was glad to see me and said, “The bar is up, and the clothes are hanging on it.” Like an excited kid he said, “Come and look!”

He was right about the bar being up and the clothes hanging on it, but my eye shot to the back of the closet where large nail holes dotted every half inch on the wall, left to right, like a computer period-key gone wild. He smiled and said, “I had a little trouble finding the studs, but it’s up there good and solid.”

That dotted line was my object lesson for the duration: don’t ask Nate (or anyone) to do a job he’s not capable of doing well. The truth is, hanging that clothes bar was on my skill-list, not his. I knew about that when I asked him, so I got what I deserved. Just before we moved last summer, we spackled the holes and painted the wall. And he was right. That bar was still up there good and solid. He’d finished it “all the way.”

Today was a tough grieving day for me because of the truth of that story. Nate’s natural skill-set, working on all numbers-related projects, handling insurance companies, playing phone tag, remembering when payments are due, researching everything, planning ahead, has been removed from our partnership, and I’m needing it, needing him. After spending four hours on the phone with multiple insurance companies and enduring a parade of wait-times, I’d failed on several counts. But moving to internet projects, I hoped to do better.

Concentrating hard to pay bills on line by myself for the first time, I failed at that, too, unable to make it “stick”. I stood up in front of the computer and burst into tears, longing to have Nate back. I cried off my mascara, then put some more on, but in a few minutes had cried it off again.

I told myself that people who never marry somehow manage to figure out how to do things outside their natural expertise, so I should, too. The problem is that in marriage, partners learn to lean on each other for opposite abilities. Although Nate and I hadn’t mastered that, after forty years, we’d come a long way.

My marriage ended when Nate died. His ended, too, but he’s not missing me like I’m missing him. I guess the conclusion should be that when someone is sorely missed, the relationship must have been a good one. I know I’ll never be the same without him.

When life ends, love doesn’t. And the raw truth is, when a spouse dies, love only continues to grow.

“Christ, who is the head of his body, the church, makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.” (Ephesians 4:15b-16)

Twenty-ten is the year of the census. We’ve all received survey forms, and our government’s goal is to count every citizen. It’s nice to know we count, at least once every ten years.

At the beginning of our lives we all count, too. As our parents announced our names, they were recorded on a document even more official than a census form. Our birth certificates follow us through life, and we often find ourselves needing to pull them from the file cabinet to prove who we are.

I remember needing our firstborn’s birth certificate to register him for kindergarten in a public school. As it turned out, we used a Christian school instead, but had he gone to the public kindergarten, legal proof of age was essential. When you’re five years old, your birth certificate is the only official thing you’ve got.

We use birth certificates when it’s time to get a social security card, a driver’s permit, a driver’s license or an official ID card. They’re required again when applying for passports and also to get a marriage license, assuring the bride and groom are of legal marrying age. Birth certificates vouch for us in name, age, parentage and citizenship, awarding us all the rights in each of those categories.

At the end of our lives we each get another important document, a death certificate. This, too, becomes official and of permanent importance, the original filed with the state in which a person dies. I remember my deep sadness in sitting with the Hospice nurse who came to our Michigan home the evening Nate died, to fill out his death certificate. She made the official pronouncement that his life had ended and signed the paper.

As with a birth, a death is documented carefully but includes far more information than a birth certificate. In addition to name, address, date and time, it includes social security number, ancestry, military record, race, education, occupation, where the person died, who was present, whether or not a doctor was there, the reason for the death, what happened to the body and other facts.

If someone dies at home without Hospice care, the police arrive in squad cars. They bring detectives who legally must question the sorrowful spouse to learn if there was wrong-doing in the death, adding incredible strain to an already distressing situation. The body is taken away in a body bag by a coroner rather than on a stretcher by a representative of a funeral home, but this is official death certificate procedure.

Birth and death certificates bookend the whole of life on earth. We all start at one document and end at the other.  Our little grandson Nicholas, born in the UK and receiving his birth certificate there, automatically became a British citizen, just as children born in the US automatically become American citizens. His parents worked hard, however, to also secure American citizenship for Nicholas, since Hans is still a citizen of the US. This privileged baby had a passport picture taken before he could even sit up and pose, but dual citizenship in the two most powerful nations on the globe is a valuable commodity.

I have dual citizenship, too, although not in two countries. Although I’m an American, I also have citizenship in heaven, secured and written on a document far more important than any manuscript on file in our 50 states. My name is written in what the Bible calls the Lamb’s Book of Life, God’s record of everyone who embraces Jesus as the only way to heaven.

Nate’s name is written in that book, too, which is the reason he’s happily living in paradise today. And although birth and death certificates are supremely important on this earth, when all is said and done, the Lamb’s Book of Life will trump them all.

Referring to God’s eternal city: “Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” (Revelation 21:27)

Although my siblings and I are three-fourths Swedish, Mom never let us forget about the other fourth, thanks to her Irish father. St. Patrick’s Day was important to her, and she whooped it up big when the time came. She never drank a drop of alcohol in her life, but her love for a hilarious good time sometimes made us wonder.

Mom and Dad were a classic case of opposites attracting, and Dad once told us that one of the reasons he married Mom was because he knew she would be “good for him.” He was a conservative, shy Swede who didn’t speak English when he started school and never got into the social whirl. Mom, on the other hand, was a social whirl.

I have to admire Dad. He took a chance on a 29 year old extrovert when he was a quiet 42 year old. There were a few fireworks along the way, but overall it worked out as he’d hoped. She drew him into the party scene (Christian parties, of course), and he pulled her toward… well… I guess he didn’t. But they made it to their 50^th anniversary appreciating each other’s differences.

Every March 17^th Dad put up with Green Hi-C punch instead of his morning orange juice and green scrambled eggs instead of his preferred hard boiled. Mint jelly on his toast wasn’t as good as grape, but because he loved his wife, he went along on her holiday ride.

As for Mom, she pulled out all the stops. The whole relation was invited for a green dinner, and we all arrived wearing the right color. Mom always assured us she was “decorated to the skin,” which meant she was wearing her green underwear. Her exterior was adorned with buttons referencing her Irish heritage, and the meal was so colorful, it cast a green glow throughout the room.

Making a trip to downtown Chicago to see the river dyed green and the parade down State St. was good for starters, but her real love was playing games at home with her 17 grandchildren, the perfect number of kids for March 17th. She also passed out St. Pat’s Day cards to all of us with a $2 bill in each one, “a little something green.” (After she died, we found a stack of them in her dresser drawer.)

Mom was quick to say, “I know I’m only half Irish, but I lost all my Swedish blood in nose bleeds as a child.” She did indeed  seem to be Irish through and through, able to talk with a perfect brogue and tell a joke without botching the punch line.

So what’s the point of all of this? We’ve all heard the expression, “A mother is the hub of the home.” And another favorite, “If Mom ain’t happy, no one’s happy.”  In recent years being a mom with a keen interest in putting family first has come upon hard times. But if “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,” what’s not to love about that powerful position?

One of the most important jobs every mother has is to show her family that being together is a good time, rich with blessing. In recent months I’ve experienced unnumbered blessings and endless help from my immediate and extended family members coming together for my benefit, young and old alike. Part of the reason is that Mom worked steadily to foster camaraderie and harmony within her family, beginning many decades ago. When she created holiday traditions, no matter how goofy, she was accomplishing her goal:  “Make it so much fun at home, they’ll want to be together there.”

”If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (1 Timothy 5:8)