Cemetery Sentiment

The monument went up this week.

We quite like it.  Once the landscapers in my life have spruced up the grounds surrounding it, we'll re-post another portrait of mom's resting place.

To clarify, our sister's tombstone is flat and was right beside mom's 'plot' (that word just sounds strange in my ears) and it was moved to become the new foot-stone of a double side by side burial plot  * spot/place/grave?!    A headstone wide enough to straddle both spaces :) and engraved with Moms chosen scripture verse, turned out to be a convenient and meaningful way to respect our mothers' desire for a more 'family' oriented resting place.

I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly thank and recommend the services and staff of Kitching Steepe and Ludwig Funeral Home.   Respectful, compassionate, professional, amazing....these are the words that come so easily to mind in describing our experience with them.

Supply of monuments is a new and welcome complement to their many fine ways 

of assisting families with their final arrangements.

Union Cemetery in Waterdown is old, well-treed and now, almost at capacity.  

When our kids were young we would often end our family picnics at the Dundas Driving Park with a walk through the old cemetery up on the hill.  Many a pioneer cemetery in Ontario 

(and almost ALL the ones on the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia) have been traversed in quiet contemplation by myself and camera and usually accompanied by someone(s) I love.

Laying the body of my very young sister in the ground (and her still born child before that) was an experience of the soul-shaping sort; one that sparked a yearning 

to be found standing in a cemetery on The Day ~ that final day of this world as we know it.  

On that day, at the sound of God's command and a trumpet call like something 

OUT OF THIS WORLD, 

(uhm...Duh! :) 

I will see Jesus coming down from heaven and THEN...

all the dead in Christ will rise first!

And then, after that?   Those of us who are still alive 

and are left will be caught up together with the throng of rising dead in the clouds 

to meet the Lord in the air!

.... and so we will be with the Lord forever.
I Thessalonians 4: 13ff

Yep.  The Bible tells me so.  And I believe it.

A cemetery will be a front row seat to the unspeakably spectacular.  

The camera won't matter so much.
Being there with someone(s) I love, will.

Some New Grand at Chesley

First of all, I forgot to mention how our Coffeehouse culminated, and it needs noting.

Nieces Heather and Emily had worked feverishly on knitting an afghan for Grandma in the hopes of presenting it to her with time enough to enjoy it.

That timely moment as you know, never materialized.

So instead...

It was their decision to present the blanket to her dearest friends in her memory.

The way this knitting parallel keeps springing up unexpectedly in the fabric of our lives leaves me with a great sense of wonder and gratitude.   

Like being wrapped up in a comfortable sense of the mysterious :)

Uncle Bert and Aunt Arien?  We love you too...

Two days later, as if by way of divine confirmation that ALL of life at every stage, is safely in His hands, Pauline (& Gerry) became the fourth of Mom's children to be rewarded with the crown of grandparenthood!  

Little Gideon Alexander arrived a month early and becomes the twelve great-grandchild in a growing family clan that continues to taste much undeserved goodness from a Faithful Father God.

Lindsay and Brad are the proud parents and are doing well.

The grand-parents are simply out of their minds with delight.  

Yep.

We TOTALLY get it.  

Is this little 6 pounder not the sweetest most alert preemie EVER???

A Mom's Place

We did it.  We finally went through Mom's place.  

Sorting, discovering, claiming, giving away....

Right now, the experience simply defies words.  

The motherhood of all bitter-sweetness.

This heart is a torrent of feelings, 

some piled high and some carved low.  

But this head! ? ugh! --- 

it just seems to run around in an irreverent sort of way,

playing hide and seek inside that place.  

That space of tumultuous terrain. 

Hence the 'no words' dilemma. 

I'm glad to have this album of pictures to help me remember the way it was.

The song playing through the slideshow is 

Perfect Peace by Laura Story.

It is fitting -- but again, only strangely so.

My niece Julia (or was it Emily?) found her grandmother's old, sun beaten calendar which, 

on the day of her death records a curious but appropriate thought and prayer:

  

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, 

no mind has conceived what 

God has prepared for those who love him"  

I Corinthians 2:9

O Lord, lead me Home to heaven 

by whatever way I must go.

Things of Spring *** Springy Things

My Aunt Ria lives down the road from me.  We have lived on this road together for more than ... for a very long time then.   She has come to be synonymous with Forsythia and our first sign of spring.  I cannot tell you how many times I would visit mom for her birthday on April 4th and find a spray of forsythia branches in the centre of her kitchen table ---
buds bursting forth with a brilliant yellow.  

A sunny B Complex capsule in it's most natural form  :) This year, I got to be the happy recipient of my aunt's thoughtful drop-in delivery and am showcasing it here in memory of Mom along with her favourite flower - the fragrant freesia in white and lavender.  On the 4th, her offspring hope to spend some time reminiscing in her cozy little sitting room.  I shall take a yellow sprig along for old times sake!    

A barrel chested pair of morning doves have returned to their favourite section of eavestrough right outside the patio doors.   I studied them for quite a while today as they set up their nest.  I like them well enough - I don't like their incessant 5 am calls - conversely, that just brings the image of a BB gun to mind. 

It was fun to see their frequent & fervent peering over the edge and imagine them tut-tutting over the shocking accumulation of snow on the back deck.  

Julsie had to content herself with a pile of books while the housecleaning was being done.

Bring on the spring thaw!

I think if you were born in the late 80's, you might have some trouble identifying this next picture.  I found them in the long neglected backspace of the bathroom closet.   

Strips of flannel for rag rolling and foam curlers.  

Yes sir-ree bob.  Saturday evenings, all us girls lined up after our bath for a head full of foam rollers.  Sometimes we even got to sit a spell under the oversized
helmut'ish'-looking Automatic hair dryer. 

I took a bunch from home when I married and subjected my own daughters to the same Saturday evening ritual.  I do believe those strands of blonde hair belong to our baby - who just turned 21 yesterday.

My kids can't quite believe ( or is it me?) that the curling iron only became a common household item in my teenage years.  And it too, is already nearing extinction.

Apparently our four year old grand-daughter arrived in ringlets at church last week.

To my way of reckoning, there's only ONE way to put ringlets on a little head of hair....

:)  some traditions never die.

Commencing May 3, Toronto's newly built Roundhouse Theatre is featuring a live performance of one of the most highly esteemed books ever read to my children as they were growing up.  This beautifully illustrated hardcover of The Railway Children by E. Nesbit was the story-hour couch companion for one whole  wintry month in 1990 - according to the inscription of the inside cover.   

 From the dustcover:  

Life changes for Roberta, Peter and Phyllis when their father has to go away, and they and their mother move to a little cottage in the country.  They become the 'railway children', making friends with Perks the Porter and with the Station Master, and waving each day to the 'Green Dragon' engine as it goes by.  Soon every element of the children's lives is involved with the railway, and it is through the railway that their sadness is turned to joy.  

One of the most moving of all children's novels, it is also full of fun and excitement.  

The characters are vividly portrayed, and the reader shares every detail of their daily life.

 I plan to see this play and thereby revisit a wonderful passage of time early in our married life - 

one I'd really like to introduce to the next generation. 

We'll simply have to take the Go Train!

My Mom's story...

Catharina Verschoor was born April 4, 1939 - just when the dark clouds of another World War hung in hemisphere.  She was born in Rotterdam, one of Europe's busiest sea ports - the thus one of the first targets of the invading Nazi bombers.  

....In total, 1,150 x 50 kg (110 lb) and 158 x 250 kg (550 lb) bombs were dropped. Many of these hit and ignited homes, churches, stores, warehouses and schools resulting in uncontrollable fires in the city centre.  Hooton states that bombs ignited vegetable oil tanks on the dockside, which caused fires that spread into the city centre, causing massive devastation.  Although exact numbers are not known, nearly 1,000 people were killed and 85,000 made homeless.  Around 2.6 square kilometres (1 square mile) of the city was almost levelled. 24,978 homes, 24 churches, 2,320 stores, 775 warehouses and 62 schools were destroyed.

Mom had outgrown her shoes by at least two years before Liberation Day in May of '45.

Imagining the heart agony of having to raise little ones in such a terrifying time makes me especially respectful of my grandmother's memory.  All my photo's show a woman with a wide smile or full out in eye squinting laughter.  

A seemingly stoic strength --- unfettered by woes past or present.

.... like the way I remember Mom.

*******

I hope to post My Mom's story incrementally - we are S.L.O.W.L.Y roaming through Mom's house, discovering, holding and savouring both the memory and the memorabilia.  

*sigh*  

The Knitting Thing Again....plus addendum

Here they are.
My first (and surely, ONLY) pair of socks made by my own hand.

What fun.  Seriously.
Competent knitter I am not, but still I enjoyed the process very much.

The thrill of accomplishment - the time it afforded me to simply sit quietly, creating * pondering * listening to music * OR best of all? * sharing comfortable conversation with those I love.  
I was really hoping to have them done before Mom passed away, but I missed the mark by two weeks.
Not that it ever carried the threat of fret;  by now we've learned a thing or two about this truth:
All things in the appointed time.
I first wrote about the Master Weaver here,
the One who knits us together in our mother's wombs,
the One who charts our lives and
carries forth every purpose laid out for us
The One of whom it is said:  All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

I still can't fathom it all.  And it doesn't matter that I do.
I can simply marvel instead.  That does matter!

I post the following picture as proof that at my great age, I can be found practising the liberating skill of laughing at oneself more often.  It was a quiet evening in early December around Mom's kitchen table, (the table with the really poor lighting) a decent enough place for six dice, not so for knitting on 4mm slick turbo needles.
After fixing the umpteenth slipped stitch, my little sister ran off to her place (it's attached to moms granny suite).
'Probably pouring herself a good stiff drink' me thought :)  
A unique thought to think about a teetotaller but, oh well.
'I hope she pours a stiff one for me too!' me thought again, more sensibly this time.

She soon reappeared and with a great guffaw (and no helpful libation in hand), affixed me with a miner's sort of headlamp to address the lighting issue.  She proceeded to play the iphone paparazzi and forwarded the end result.  It was a great moment of comic relief - I think we made enough noise to even rouse Mom's curiosity from the bedroom.  

We've spent quite a bit of time there again - at Mom's place.

It's so comforting to be at her place, among the things of Mom.

I will write about that soon, but I can't just yet.

One day at a time....

My blog is my journal.  A place where I unravel and 'process' - always agonizing overlong on most posts - tweaking, refurbishing and generally driving myself nuts.
My ever cautious Beloved (with the ultra private personality) often wonders aloud what possesses me to disclose so much of myself to just ... anybody.
But I simply replicate the now famous words of my late mother:  that's just the way it is.
Apparently, many of mom's friends were also keenly aware of her decidedly firm state of mind on most issues - and somehow after the funeral, there was this old adage circulating...something about an apple not falling far from its tree.  :)
So if I must, I shall wear that mantle with both pride and humility - if such an oxymoronic style exists.

I hope someday to have my daughter teach me how to convert this blog into a hardcover book, and then snippets of my earthly sojourn will remain on a dusty shelf in our home library for any interested persons of posterity.
The reader will know one thing for sure - for good or for bad, I'm an open book.
My hubby groans reading this over my shoulder.
The reader will know one other thing for sure - the discovery (in the past thirty years) of a divine sense of humour, living with my well/cleverly appointed other half.  I could write a book about that.
Hence the groaning.

So.  The next stage of my journey will be coming to terms of an earthly life without mom nearby.
I thought I'd feel run over by a truck by now.  But no.  I thought maybe I'd just feel empty.  But no.
... At least not yet.
I feel too grateful to God for His overwhelmingly specific and speedy answer to our prayer(s) - for giving us the enormous privilege of waving her off on the riverbank - for bringing Nicole back into her life before having to leave it behind - for the realization of how rich she was in faithful, affirming friendship...

On Sunday, I could re-connect with my own church family - and then ultimate dessert!.... reveling in the company of my preschool peeps over dinner 

and a delightfully squishy viewing of the Curious George Movie on laptop. 

(Laptop just took on a whole new meaning :) 

My conclusion thus far?  It's not a crime against mom to 'enjoy' these first days of mourning.

On the contrary, I will 'credit' her by attempting to adopt her hard-won conviction of Matthew 6:34:

Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  

Each day has enough trouble of its own. 

Yep.  One day at a time.  

Walk by faith, not sight.