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For a widowed mother who left young children behind

A Letter To My Children

Jeremiah 31:3-10

Carl Jung said something like this, "The old we expect to die, but death comes like an evil thief when the young are taken from us. It is a period in the middle of the sentence. It is a story cut off before its finished."

It is like that, isn't it? When the elderly die, we hurt because we miss them, but we say things like, "It was time. It was for the best." We are easily able to make our peace with it. But when the young die, and though Mary was no longer a youth, she was still too young to die, when the young die, it's as if a cruel thief has come in the night and stolen that which was most precious to us and we wake in the morning to their empty beds. When death comes that way it sticks in your craw.

Friday night, my daughter celebrated her sixteenth birthday party by hosting an all-night sports fest at the YMCA. It began at 10 p.m. and ended at 6 a.m. Saturday morning. When Donna and I got home at about 6:45 that morning, we pressed the answering machine button to retrieve our messages and we listened as Joanna told us that Mary had suffered a heart attack and was gone. We looked at each other shocked -- disbelieving. And I said to my wife, "Those poor kids. Mom and Dad both gone so young."

I can only imagine how I would have felt; what I would have thought had it happened to me at their age. I know I would have felt it unfair, and I surely would have wondered how I was going to go on. What would become of me at eighteen without parents? I know my heart would have cursed angry words at a God who would allow this to happen. I don't know what you all feel today, but I would have been filled with sorrow; I'd have been confused, and angry, and anxious.

The last couple of nights here at the funeral home I have been watching you, Nate. I hope you don't mind, but I have been watching you because I have a daughter only two years younger than you and I have been thinking what it would like for her to lose both her parents in just a few short years. I started thinking if I had died and were looking on from my new home in God's house, watching as my daughter dealt with my death, what would I want to say to her? What would I want her to know? I think if Mary could somehow send you a letter, get a message to you, she would say something like this:

I know I didn't say it nearly enough, but I love you guys with all my heart. I just hope that as you go through the rest of your lives you will overlook my failings and remember my love. And don't worry about what will happen to you; who will take care of you. I know now just how much God loves you all and he will use all kinds of people to take care of you. Just look around you in that room you're in right now. If I know anything I know that that room is filled with people who love you. Those people will make sure that you are okay. They won't leave you to fend for yourselves.

Much as I wish that I were the one there loving you and taking care of you, I know that God will send someone, or many someones, your way to fill the vacuum of love left when I left. He will take care of you, never doubt it.

Don't worry about me for one second. You wouldn't believe what happened to me the other night if I told you. All I can say is that it was the most incredible, glorious moment I have ever experienced. I felt sick, and I felt the life ebbing away from me. I was dying. I knew it, and I was frightened. And then, suddenly, in a flash, I felt more wonderful than I can tell you. So wonderful that I felt like I was glowing, like I could fly. I had no pain anywhere. Most amazing of all I felt loved in a way I cannot begin to describe. Just know that I am alive, and whole, and so happy, and that the only thing that can make me happier is for you to stay close to God so that when your lives end I will be with you again.

You stay close to God and someday, hopefully many years from now, when you are lying on your bed of death, you will hear a wonderful quiet song in your ears. A lullaby that serenades with the sweetest melody, "Come home my sweet child. It is beautiful here. I am waiting for you." That will be my song sung to you my once upon a time little ones. I will sing you into the kingdom of God and when you arrive I will be the first one there to greet you. It will be magnificent.

Love, Mom

Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for Mary -- for all the ways she touched and molded and lifted our lives -- for her steady quiet spirit -- for her courage and determination through tough times -- for her love. We pray now that you would grant us that peace that comes only from knowing in the depths of our beings -- that you are the God who makes all things new -- the God who conquered death and grants his children new life -- because of your love and faithfulness and power. She is alive, even more alive today than ever she was in this life. Amen.