TOWSON, Maryland, Tuesday, July 18, 2017 - On a day not unlike today, but 88 years back, a stoic, wary young couple living not far from where I am composing this piece, celebrated the birth of a healthy young baby girl. The healthy part was the important part for this couple - both of whom were raised on small working family farms in Northern Baltimore County - because their first child, also a girl, had died after spending a scant ten months alive on this Earth. This child - the one born on July 18, 1929 - would not perish in infancy but would instead live the better part of 88 years on this Earth. All of the folk who came to know her during those nearly 88 years were far better off for it.
I know that personally. I am one the lucky ones.
The baby girl - whose name was Elenore - grew and was educated, then worked, then married and gave birth to two of her own children, raised them, worked a whole lot more, took very good care of her family (which included the two parents, her husband, those two children, a passel full of grandchildren and great grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. At the end of her Earthly story, sadly, came the inevitable: as humans are wont to do, in her old age she took sick and died. The death was foreseeable for her family because she had been sick for a couple of years, but it was devastating nonetheless. Today would have been that 88th birthday. It is a sad day.
There are those out there who would argue that it should be a day of celebration, a day when all of her accomplishments would be talked about and treasured in the way that families do such things. But that would be to deny reality. In the real world, when someone you love dies, remembering them hurts. It hurts surely and deeply, and it hurts a lot.
Shortly, I will drive my father to the little cemetery up on the hill on Dance Mill Road, where tears will well up and be freely shed. Not even the presence of a great grand child will keep that from taking place. Because, no matter how beautifully we remember that dear departed, she will not be here with us.
As a Christian, the thing that keeps me and us going is the sweet hope of a reunion with her in heaven. The Lord, however, is a bit disgusted when we phrase it that way. There is no hoping about this; it is an assurance that the Lord gave us. It is an assurance from the Lord God Almighty. He doesn't go back on such things. And so I say, as a Christian, the thing that keeps me and us going is the sweet and certain assurance of a reunion with my dear mother in heaven.
I will see you then, mom.
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