Visit To My Mom (And My Dad)

I went to visit my mom in SC for a few days. 

During my visit, she was dog/ house sitting for close friends of our family only a few minutes from her apartment, so during the days, I visited her and the dogs at our friends' house where she was working, but in the evenings and early mornings, I stayed in her small apartment and took care of her cats while she was away.

It worked out beautifully, since I needed to get a few hours of work done in the evenings and mornings and her empty apartment provided the quiet space I needed, and I was there to help the cats, who get anxious and needed some attention while she was away caring for our friends' dogs. 

I also got to see our old friends when they returned to town and visit with them, too- an unexpected blessing! 

 

While I was in town, I was able to help my mom set up and start learning to use her new cell phone, a hilarious and exhausting endeavor. 

Curse words were said in plenty; She almost threw the phone a few times. 

Above is the pic we used for her new contact card, taken at the senior center - beautiful! 

She's getting older, certainly- and it's something I never thought would happen to my mom, who was always incredibly strong, so I value the time visiting with her knowing from previous experience with my dad, it won't be forever. Yet. 

Early Sunday morning, I went to see my dad's grave. I hadn't seen his new headstone. 

We placed his grave in an open field with a wide view of the sky. 

I always feel like he'll get a great view of Christ's return from that particular place in the earth. 

But I guess every grave, no matter where on earth, even the deepest sea, will ultimately have the same perspective of Christ's return, since the dead in Christ will all equally rise in Him. 

I prayed about what I might take to place on my dad's headstone as a sign that I had been to visit. I know people often bring rocks, but I wasn't sure that was "right" for my dad. 

I ventured into a drug store to perhaps find flowers, but instead, I found the home improvement section and saw... a level... perfect! 

My dad was a craftsman, trained by his dad, and the art and skill and interest in working with wood was shared by at least some of my dad's brothers, too. 

I have a few things my dad built for me- tables, a rocking horse, birdhouses, etc., and I have a cross on the wall his brother made. I really cherish those items though they are simple, after all, and some are rough and obviously handmade out of made of wood. But they are some of my favorite things on earth. 

You should know that it is a cherished family memory/joke that my dad's level wasn't always correct, so some things he built were ever-so-slightly crooked. 

But, of course, in Heaven, everything Dad might make there is at perfect right angels; Heaven is the only place where perfect right angels actually exist. 

I've been reading the Bible and following Jesus since I was a teenager, but right now, I'm also studying Ancient Greek philosophy in graduate school, so placing a level on my dad's headstone was the perfect symbol for my dad, for me, for my family's running joke, indeed- for what any gift left on any headstone ever represents. 

I'm thankful for the way my soul felt like God was with me as moved in prayer that morning from my mom's apartment to the drugstore to the graveside. There has been and still is a lot of disorder, sin, and outright chaos in my family, but there are times in the midst of that chaos, when my soul can perceive that things are obviously being ordered, and the only explanation for that is that God is, and He is with us even in the chaos we create. 

I listened to the songs we played for my dad as he laid in hospice and those we had on the playlist as people came into his funeral service, hymns sung by Southern musicians, the style my dad liked best.    

While I sat and visited at my dad's grave and prayed, I played the song "I Come to the Garden," one of my dad's dad's favorites, if I remember the things my dad told me correctly. Though my dad or mom did not walk openly with God most of their adult life, his dad had been a preacher. So, when I came to faith in God apart from my parents' example, it was a sign to my dad that God had kept His promises through generations, and my dad admitted as much. 

My dad recognized my Christian faith as the same as his father's, and eventually, Dad would confess Christ as His Savior, too, but always only rarely, in certain moments, after talking for a long time out in the yard under the sky, or only on hospital beds when reality of death closed in. 

I placed my cell phone on the headstone just as I had placed it near my dad's pillow while he laid between life and death in hospice. I still remember how he seemed to smile as the music played. 

As I listened to the song quietly at his graveside, I noticed seeds/ seed husks on the ground around me at his headstone. But once I actually noticed these seeds, they seemed to pour out of ground around me, because there were thousands of them! 

So, I dutifully picked several up and took them home in my pocket. They are with me here in CT now. I plan to grow them and just see what they might be. 

To me, every seed is a symbol of the Resurrection. When we die, our bodies are planted in the ground, but our bodies will rise again someday with Christ. 

I myself was the one who placed the remains of my dad's body in the ground at that exact spot several months ago, and I can still feel the memory of in my muscles, bending, placing, etc. 

So going home from my dad's grave with seeds in my pocket felt like a promise, like the Lord gave me back a symbol to carry home with me for the one I'd left. 

It was a few hours later that I also connected that fact that my mom likes to collect seeds. She'll dry anything and everything- flower, plant, vegetable- and collect seeds from them to grow again. As I moved around her tiny apartment, I even found some containers with seeds in them on this visit. 

It's an obsession. She'll find seeds and grow them just to see what they look like. It doesn't matter to her that the plant is actually ugly when it grows. She takes childlike wonder in the whole process, and it's a quiet habit she has had for as long as I can remember. 

So again, going home with seeds in my pocket now also seems like something my mother's daughter would do. It's fitting that I have my mother's instincts. I was Created from her seed, and it is likely something she may have passed on to me just as seeds always pass on what they are to the next generation. 

I plan to bring my mom whatever plant these seeds grow when I visit again in March, and I'll tell her this story then, if the Lord allows it. 

In her small apartment, mom has a sunroom (of all things for any small apartment to have). It is filled with plants she grows from seeds. 

She doesn't have the heart to visit Dad's grave, and probably never will, but I know she'll love having a plant from his graveside. 

To us when we were looking for the right apartment for mom after dad died- it was another sign to us that God provided an apartment with a sun room. It was, to our hearts, proof that God sees her, knows her needs, knows our particular family intimately, and really takes care of us just like a master gardener, planting us each in just the right spaces so we can grow best.

Order in the midst of chaos, simple earthly things that reflects God's glory- This is my family's story.