Losing Our Mother

I have been thinking about writing this for some time. Sometimes writing of this nature helps bring closure to a situation. It can be somewhat cathartic, perhaps healing. A past trauma can be dealt with. 

Losing our mother had a beginning in a certain point in time. However, as life has continued to unravel in this area, I realized that losing one’s mother does not necessarily come to an end. At least, not in this life.

It was in Winnipeg; December 14, 1963. I was in Grade XII. Mother had experienced an exciting fall getting back into teaching after eighteen years. I remember how pleased she was to be able to put on a lovely white blouse over a grey wool skirt, pin on a favourite brooch, and get back into the classroom. She was just 43-years-old.

We were deep into winter – snow, freezing temperatures. Christmas was coming. We had a tree up in front of our ‘picture window,’ with lights encircling it. Something new and fascinating was a little coupling, between light cord and socket, that caused the ‘Christmas lights’ to flash off and on intermittently. My younger brothers were playing in our living room, where stood the tree, and were bothered by the on-and-off feature, so it was ‘off.’

Our parents were preparing to go to a Christmas social at our church. They were going to pick up Dad’s brother, Uncle Victor, and his wife, Aunt Margaret, who was, coincidentally, mother’s cousin. They had just moved to Winnipeg. The women of our church were putting this social on and their husbands were their guests. Our parents were excited to go; it was their first such outing since moving to the city some sixteen months earlier. 

When they had dressed, and passed by my room at the top of the stairs, I asked mother whether we couldn’t leave the intermittent light switch ‘on.’ I thought it helped make our place more noticeable to passersby. I think she asked me to consider my brothers and we said goodbye and I turned to my homework and they continued down the staircase and left.

A few hours later I heard the door open and steps on the stairs. I turned to my bedroom door and there was father, with Uncle Victor right behind. Father had a pained expression on his face. It was as if he was choking on the first words that came out of his mouth, “Your mother’s dead,” he said. 

The rest of the evening, and indeed, much of the days that followed, remains a blur in my memory. I do have a diary that I kept, that I can refer to, but I don’t want to be obsessive about details here.

We children, there were five of us in school, quite school a week earlier than our peers for ‘Christmas break.’ Our grandparents, our uncles and aunts, friends from church, were in and out of our home. They brought food or prepared it at our place. They helped look after us – my youngest sibling was 7-year-old Tim – while also helping father with the necessary arrangements for things like a funeral and burial.

When a funeral home had been secured – Loewen’s of Steinbach, whom I discovered later, had longtime connections with our parents – father took us children to view our mother’s body, nicely dressed and lying in a casket. I remember how gray she looked… I had my little camera along and took a picture. 

Besides our grandparents – mother’ parents from Winkler and Dad’s from Clearbrook (now part of Abbotsford), BC, other uncles and aunts came to the city. Uncle Henry and Esther Born and their family were traveling back from South America where they were in mission work, to BC, and made a last minute detour to Manitoba.

Then came the day for the funeral, held not in our church, Winnipeg Bergthaler Mennonite, but in the larger more distant Bethel Mennonite. It was bitterly cold - minus thirty degrees. A long black limousine came to pick us up to go on the long ride to the church. I had mixed feelings about riding in this car – there was the element of luxury for a teenage car nut like myself at the time – but it came with death. 

After the funeral, of which I remember nothing, we again rode the limousine to Brookside Cemetery out by the airport for mother’s internment. Our family and friends huddled around the gravesite while last words were spoken in the fading winter sunlight. Then it was back to the church for a reception, which was the custom. All I really remember of that was our Aunt Ruby (Dad’s older brother Peter’s wife) Brandt’s mother, Mrs. Robinson, coming up to me to give me a big hug and express her condolences. I don’t recall anyone else doing that. Hugs were not yet common in the Mennonite repertoire of social behaviour. As I write, it is only days since I shared that memory with Aunt Ruby, now 97, long-since widowed, and my cousin Shirley, her daughter, on a visit to them in Houston, Texas, where they now live.

Then it was on into the New Year, 1964. Distant relatives went home. However, we continued to get a lot of support from especially mother’s parents and siblings and their families. Mother’s youngest sister Marian was still single and in the city and she came over a lot to help with household tasks. Loretta, next youngest to me at 15, our only sister, went through an accelerated period of learning to do more of the tasks considered women’s work in those days.

We went back to school, except for me! I had contracted mumps somehow during this period of time, and so was a couple of weeks late returning to classes – at the new River East Collegiate in North Kildonan, where we had moved six months earlier.

Life continued. There was no talk of what we had just experienced. Of course, family and friends showed their support and care in the ways already described. There was no lack of love. However, I don’t recall anyone expressing any particular concern for how we were all doing. There was no processing of our experience. There was certainly no grief counseling, as there often is nowadays. That was something unknown in our circles. 

We had lost our mother, traumatically, long before we should have. That’s all we knew. Were we in shock? Is that why I have so little memory of this all? Were we in denial? Was that the only way to cope? It seems we all just closed the wound as quickly and as best as we could in our own ways and carried on. 

To be continued

Halloween? About Death & the Devil

Halloween? About Death & the Devil

A few years ago my wife and I were fortunate to be able to take a week's vacation at Lake Chelan in Washington state, not that far over the border from where we live. As is often our custom when away on a Sunday, we visited one of the local churches. We have had many wonderful experiences doing this over the years.

This just happened to be the Sunday before Halloween. Now, as we all know, Halloween has become greatly 'überdone' as a special event in the calendar year. Indeed, most of what we see in our North American context is anything but hallowed. And if that isn't enough, many now have to include the day before Halloween to try and accomplish more wickedness. In fact, some call it 'Devil's Night', others 'Mischief Night'.

Halloween has also become a huge business, which is typical of anything in the USA especially. As soon as Thanksgiving is over, it's Halloween all the way, at least in Canada. In the US of course, Thanksgiving comes almost a month after Halloween, so, ironically, they may actually be spared some of the hoopla about Halloween we have here.

But I digress somewhat; I was not intending to write a feature about Halloween. We attended a Nazarene church that Sunday and the pastor spoke on the devil, which was appropriate, considering what was coming up the day after. He talked about how Halloween is about ghosts, goblins and other creatures we associate with the other world, particularly that of the world of those who have experienced death. He also spoke then of how the skeleton, gravestones, coffins etc. are such common motifs in all things to do with Halloween in the secular sense.

The points that the pastor made about all of this is that we should not be surprised. It is because of the devil that we have death. Indeed, one could say, as he basically did, that the devil is all about death. As the pastor said, that's all he can do. He can't create anything as our God does. Therefore, he can't make anything good. Indeed, from what we know of his intentions, they are just to make bad what God has created good.

So, next time Halloween rolls around, think of the devil trapped in his limitations. Not that we should feel sorry for him by any means. We do need to have certain respect for him in terms of acknowledging his existence and what he is about and, as Christians, with Jesus' power resist him. As I wrote in my other blog entry today, Jesus has defeated death and the devil. Jesus came to bring us life; the devil can only come to bring us death. So what does this really say about what Halloween in our modern society is all about?

Seeing through a glass darkly

This is one of those weekends. Already towards the end of the week my brother-in-law in Taiwan had contacted my wife to say that the family there thought she should come back because her father was dying. She had just returned from there December 22 after being there for 12 weeks.

Then, one of our best friends locally ended up in a hospital in downtown Vancouver earlier in the week with a serious illness that they are still investigating. Her husband and I visited her this afternoon.

Finally, after dinner this evening I received an email from my brother-in law saying that our father had peacefully passed away about the time that my wife, his daughter, was waiting in the departure lounge for her trip back to Taiwan. Now, I know that going a day or 2 earlier would not have made any difference in terms of communication between the 2, in all probability, due to his state of health. However, it is always nice to be there with your loved one.

As we drove back over the bridge from Vancouver in the fog, which limits one's visibility, I was thinking about these things in conjunction with the message we heard in our worship service this morning based on Luke 13:20-21. It reminded me of Paul's statement in that famous 13th chapter of first Corinthians:

"For now we see in the mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face."

Indeed, no matter what we learn, no matter what we experience, in this life on earth, it is only a shadow of what is yet to be.

As I told our friend in hospital, our Minister to Seniors had talked in church this morning about her visit with our friend the day before, saying that even in hospital she was a positive person.  I told our friend that I could only believe that it was God's spirit in her helping her be like this in spite of her circumstances.  Even saying she was thankful for hospital food because so many people in the world have poorer food or none.  

From her talking of her hospital experience and the staff's responses to her, I could tell that even the staff, at all levels, are encouraged and blessed by her positive presence there. That is a good thing, I said. So, there is a good reason for her being there, besides her condition getting properly so she gets diagnosed properly and then receives the treatment she needs. I am sure the staff from the doctors and the nurses on down to the housekeepers and kitchen staff need some affirmation.  Too often they hear complaints because, of course, most people who are ill and in the hospital are not very happy.  We even heard some of that on the elevator from a former employee who was in a wheelchair on her way down with us after our visit was over.  So, I said, you are a blessing to the people around you, just as they are trying to help you.

How this connected with the message this morning is like this. A visiting Pastor (we are in the middle of a pulpit exchange process) spoke about where Jesus tells the parable of the kingdom of God being like a woman who puts leaven or yeast in dough and the whole mixture was eventually leavened. According to her interpretation, sometimes we are busy and working hard putting in the leaven or yeast. Sometimes those are difficult times when God is testing us. I know my friend has been through that with family struggles and now with her own illness.

Then there are the times when we just have to sit and wait for the yeast to make the bread rise. That is like the times we have to be patient and wait for God to do what he wants to do with us. I told my friend that perhaps God knew she needed time away in hospital from all of the stress to let others do things for her and with her and let the yeast do its work. Sometimes interruptions like that in our lives, as much as we may not understand and appreciate them at the time, are a way God uses to get our attention and show us something.

Of course, the yeast is a metaphor for the Spirit working in our lives, in the life of the church. The Parable tells us the Spirit continues to work and the kingdom continues to grow in spite of ourselves. It reminds us that this is God's work and it is not as dependent on us as we sometimes think.

After I left, I wrote back to my friend, addressing it to a hospital address from which the hospital apparently prints and distributes the emails to the patients as a modern-day greeting card:

“We will continue to pray for you and the doctors and nurses working with you, just as the 3 of us did together before we left. We know you are in God's hands and it seems that you are in good human hands there too. God has prepared them for you so let us give thanks for them and for a place like this that can help us in our time of need.”