Christmas isn’t supposed to be a time for being preoccupied
with death. It is, for a Christian, time
to celebrate the beginning of real life, for Christ’s coming means the
beginning of the new order, God’s Kingdom set in motion, his kingdom of love
and light.
But for me this Christmas time was a journey for death’s
sake. In mid-December I boarded a plane
bound for Spokane, the nearest point to the farm where I grew up, and, if the
truth were told, the place where home abounds.
Those hills will always fill me with peace and joy, and if
I close my eyes, I am there.
Death had come to my 92-year-old uncle, my favorite
uncle. As a child he babysat me, laughed with me, and I basked in his presence.
Later, though we met scarcely once a year, there was no distance between
us. Face to face, even a few words made
the day whole. The last time I saw him,
it was at another funeral service, and we sat at a table with our arms
around each other’s shoulders. I have
the picture to prove it.
We cousins and children met to say good by to Uncle
Archie. We said good by in hugs, tears,
eyes glued to the pictures of him in his combine. We said good by in saying, “Remember when?”
and "Please tell me again how you held his hand and he squeezed it and then
took his last breath." We said good by
when we shared lunch at the church and playing switching chairs so we could sit
by everyone. We said good by as we
wound our way from the church to the cemetery that overlooked the Snake
River. We stood by Uncle Archie in his
box and listened to his boys (men over 60 now) saying he never became angry with them. We heard his nephew declare, “He was
my second father.”
By this time we were less than a dozen cousins, sons, and
spouses. We stood in the weak sunshine and
wet grass that chilled our toes, loath to leave. We stretched
the day when we, as a group, decided we must visit our grandpa and grandma,
Archie’s parents. We knew they were somewhere near
the trees at the top of the hill, so all of us spread out and walked over the
area, hunting from stone to stone. My brother was the one
who found them. We stood around their
graves and said a few words of remembrance, the closing of a circle of the day.
To spend a day with dear men and women of the same DNA and
experiences, and most of all, of the same hearts towards the Savior-to-come: so
important it was unspeakable. Hearts
were full, love spoke from eye to eye, ties strengthened beyond
breaking.
