Lessons at South Friborg

The wind is howling outside. Trees shaking their new leaves and the lilacs popping out to give their spring scent. The skies are heavy gray and I am just waiting for the first raindrop. Somewhat revealing of my own mental place today. The kids are all napping, I have a cup of iced coffee at my side, and I am curled up with the blue afghan my aunt Bev made me two decades ago.

I am remembering her today. Remembering me. Remembering Heyma. Remembering Ruth. Remembering all the “hers” that I have lost sight of. Remembering the women that rooted me and the ones that have somehow shaken loose.

The howling wind takes me to my childhood. Watching the trees sway, I was somewhat fearful of damage, of what was coming, of the unexpected explosion that may just interrupt my world. I remember sitting on Heyma’s front porch, cuddled up with a quilt on her day bed, closed eyes, the wind comforting and concerning me all at the same time. The howling through the night that would shake the old windows of my room at home. The rattling rocking me to sleep.

I listened to MPR on my way to South Friborg Cemetery this morning. This was the only radio station I recall hearing in Heyma’s car growing up. My kids and I picked a few 

branches of lilacs at our house to bring to her grave today. Lilacs are about as symbolic of Heyma for me as her green eyes and red hair. We drove by the same fields, the same lakes and trees, and the same family farms she knew in her day. Man, how things have changed. How people have changed. How I have changed.

We pulled up to the cemetery, my kids wide-eyed. A sense of reverence settled in my body, something my kids have not learned yet, but will. We opened the heavy metal gate, the same one I remember as a kid when I visited this same cemetery with Heyma. I brought our lilacs and told Olivea and Tosten to collect some other flowers from the grass (dandelions).

We sat down by her gravestone. I cried. My kids were too enthralled by all the mysteries of a cemetery to truly relax, but they tried. They eventually got up and decided to explore, whispering, stooping to look at the pictures on each gravestone, picking more “flowers” and bringing them back to Heyma’s grave. And I sat. And sat. I am still not sure what Manda sat there, whether it the mother-of-three Manda or the eight-year-old Manda sitting, but I sat.

We eventually held hands, walking through the gravestones as I attempted to explain what a cemetery was. I explained who lived in the cemetery and why we visit them. I explained the respect that each grave should be given as we walk through. I explained eternity and death and life and a million abstract thoughts at once to my children…and they just giggled. They eventually ran off and collected more dandelions to decorate each gravestone.

And it all seemed so silly. Ridiculous even.

What does a child know about such things? About death and life and heaven and hell and cemeteries and people dying that are never suppose to leave? What do they know about the millions of tears that have dropped on this ground, the dashed dreams, the broken spirits, and incurable aches that have been placed here. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And they won’t…until it happens. And it will. It always does.

The wind howled again and this time with a chill. Olivea rushed to me and said, “I cold. We go?” And that’s exactly how it feels.

But I have to remind myself…this is not the end. It is cliche’, but for them, this is just their beginning. They will feel this brokenness and probably much more. They will be crushed in ways that I never had to experience and none of those before me ever had to. And the one they’ll be mourning might be me someday. It might be my husband. It might even be each other.

And that’s how the circle goes. Round and round, generation to generation, woman to woman. Human to human. Years keep clicking by and more are born and more die. My life is but a spark in an explosion of life.

And I must live now. My moment with them is now.

I am pretty sure if Heyma was watching this whole ordeal as we visited her grave today, she probably would have been full-grinned, laughing at my children’s pure pleasure of life as they traipsed around the cemetery. In fact, most people in that cemetery probably would have delighted in their joy. Because sometimes that’s what death is…joy. Joy at birth. Joy at death. Joy of the in between. And joy of eternity.

It can be joy.

I guess if there was one thing I could teach my kids about life and death it is that it’s all fluid. The world changes. Brokenness is guaranteed. And cemeteries, well, really, they are just the place of old bodies that couldn’t hold spirits anymore. And those spirits, some of them go to a much better place where joy is the only thing that is experienced. And Jesus, well, Jesus is as real as He ever was on earth…but more.

And when their smiles hit ear to ear I will smile back and say, “I can’t wait for that either.”