Mary's Card

I wrote this a few years ago but never published it.  Until now.  This is the story of Mary, one of the faithful that I was privileged to know during our years in pastoral ministry.  Today I post this in honor of her.    

We drove to Corning yesterday to check in on Mary.  She was falling a lot, probably due to her failing  kidneys and dialysis three times a week. Now she is in a nursing home for rehabilitation.  Our visit was long overdue, she'd been there for several weeks and this was the first time we'd been over to see her.  But she didn't seem to hold it against us.  Not Mary.  Larry went in search of a couple chairs and she immediately started to talk, as if the words had been pent up for way too long and she couldn't wait to get them out.  So for the next hour or so as I plied her with questions, she did just that.  Talked.  And talked.    

A place like that can be lonely.  In the case of Mary, her husband and daughter are a good half hour away and neither drives.  Several days might go by before she's able to see them, and she misses her own place.  But still too weak to dress or bathe herself,  going home isn't an option.  Not yet anyways.

Mary has lived a simple life.  She and her husband rent a small duplex, filled with too many cats and a daughter who will never be able to live independently.  For years she rode the church van each Sunday morning and evening, teaching the preschool classes.  She was faithful, never missing, always there.  And then about a year and a half ago she stopped coming, simply too weak to make the ride over and back. 

Mary teaching one of her preschool classes

As simple as her life might seem,  Mary is actually quite intelligent and articulate.  She always had a book close at hand for the downtimes while working the information desk at St. Joseph's, one of the local hospitals, a job she had to discontinue when she became ill.  We also have a nice church library, and no one has taken greater advantage of its contents over the years than Mary.  She would probably have made a good teacher.  Come to think of it, she was.     

Mary opened the drawer of her tray table and pulled out an envelope.  "Bill and I just had our anniversary," she continued.  I nodded.  I'd seen it listed in the bulletin a couple of weeks earlier.  "Forty-two years.  We've been married 42 years.  I was in rehab that day, and I didn't know he was going to come."  She began to cry.  "He was here an hour before he even came and found me.  He didn't tell me he was coming."  She opened the envelope and drew out a greeting card.  "He brought me an anniversary card and he didn't even sign it.  He never signs his cards which annoys me." She was quiet for a moment as she slid the unsigned card back into the drawer.  "But he came.  He came."  And that was enough.  

 

A footnote: 

We would see Mary just a few more times before receiving word that she had died.  Her desire was to get back home.  She did.  She's Home.  

     

Coming Home

Our Alabama Home

It was January of 2010,  and we were experiencing our first New Year in Elmira, a small city on the Southern Tier of Upstate New York.  We'd been living in the South for the last 14 years, so it would be a big change for us, even though we'd both been raised in snow country. For the next ten years we would welcome in each New Year from our little parsonage on the corner of Charles and Federal Streets.  It was the first time in many years we'd lived in such close proximity to the church that Larry was pastoring,  and we loved the spontaneous visits and activities we could host in our home.

We had sensed almost from the moment we came to interview that this was the church for us.  It would be confirmed through a divine encounter Larry had a few days later that these were the people God had chosen for him to shepherd. To love.  And that's what he did.  We did.   

When I met and fell in love with a preacher boy, there was a sense in my spirit that this was what God had prepared for me all along.  I believed it was my calling, very much in the same way that Larry was called to be a pastor.   When the challenges were especially difficult, and we've had our share, I would remember that this was what we were created for.

The diagnosis was not unexpected but still difficult to hear.  Dementia.  We'd seen the signs.  Larry was having noticeable memory issues and finding it harder to keep track of all the responsibilities associated with being a pastor.  And though the illness was fairly early in its progression, we sensed that it was time to step away from full-time ministry and enter retirement. It was not an easy decision.  We loved our people, our community, our calling.  We would have been content to stay the course for much longer.  But we learned a long time ago that the journey often takes some unexpected turns. This just happened to be a big one.

I've always considered myself pretty adaptable.  When the kids were young, we packed up and moved to Costa Rica and then on to Honduras.  That meant both a change of cultures and  language. We've lived in the country (on a dusty dirt road), small towns and cities of varied sizes. Moving was never easy, but I saw each change as a part of the journey already laid out for us.  And with the changes,  there was always the exciting prospect of discovery and adventure in new places with people that we would get to know and grow to love.

I have to be honest. I was not anticipating this next leg of the journey.  People would often congratulate us on the retirement that was fast approaching, the obligatory thing to do I suppose.  But I felt no sense of anticipation at the thought of leaving this life that had brought us such a sense of fulfillment and joy for the last forty-two years.   

It was in August, just over a year ago, that we stopped after a long day of several hundred miles and snapped a picture at the Alabama border, grateful that we had just a few more hours of travel.  The sentiments from that welcome sign, aptly borrowed from the southern rock group, Lynard Skynard, spoke more deeply than it had on our occasional visit back to the southland over the past 12 years.  That's because this time we were coming back to stay.  

When Larry resigned his position from the church in Alabama, we never anticipated living in this house again.   But after putting it on the market and trying to sell it on and off for seven years, we came to the conclusion that it simply wasn't to be.  When the time was right, this would be our home again.  Perhaps we should have known that this was God's plan all along.  This place, this house, for this time.   

When we first came to Alabama back in the summer of 1995, our first months were in a rental.  Less that a year later, we were living in a brand new house, our first ever, on an acre of land.  A contractor who attended the church offered to build a home for us at his cost. It was one of his last jobs.  Cancer took him within a year or so after we moved in.  And so here we are, living in a house built by someone, who in spite of his own need, provided for ours 25 years ago.  And God, knowing what our need would be down the road, chose to keep this place for us.  

Starting with the farmhouse turned parsonage on that dirt road in Pennsylvania, to the mission house in Honduras, and finally, on to that dear place on the corner of Charles and Federal in New York, all have been home to me. To us. But at this juncture in our lives, I am especially grateful for our Alabama home. We are taking each day as it comes with the challenges of dementia, and I am learning to be content in this season of my life.  And as for what comes next, there are no guarantees.  But for now, we are simply grateful.