Tag: Family

A Mom’s Gifts

Published on by Marilyn1 Comment

Walking along Boston Harbor today, I was struck by the beauty all around me. While the day dawned gloomy and chilly, by noon the sky was the blue of a clear spring day and blossoms and buds had appeared like magic. It reminded me of the children’s book The Secret Garden and the description of springtime.

“Fair fresh leaves, and buds—and buds—tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air.”

The Secret Garden

It’s been six months since my mom died and I’ve been thinking a lot about her these past few days. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and it will be my first Mother’s Day where my mom is not present on this earth. I am well aware that in the natural order of things, every person gets to a point where their mothers are no longer present. I am not alone in this. In fact, I am one of those too fortunate people who had their mom for many, many years.

And I also feel the loss acutely. Last year I was recovering from major surgery, so I was unable to go be with her for Mother’s Day. Had I known that she would be gone, would I have cancelled the surgery? I don’t know that I would. I had cancelled it once before and I really couldn’t hold off anymore. I think my mom knew this and gave me the grace I needed.

Memories of previous mother’s days and other holidays, but mostly the visits I had with her where it was just the two of us on a regular weekend loom large and precious. We would go to Lake Ontario and have picnics of egg or tuna salad on fresh bread, always buying Abbot’s frozen custard on the way home. I would read aloud from either a book my brother had begun reading to her, or we would begin a new one. Some of her favorites were books by her friends from Pakistan, her eyes sparkling as she filled in details from her own memories of events relayed in these books. Her routine was to get up much later than I would in the morning so I would fix myself a cup of tea and then have breakfast with her when she got up. Parathas and spicy eggs were a favorite from her Pakistani past, but as time went on, a simple piece of toast or an English muffin was all she could eat.

In the months before she died, it was more difficult for her to get up and get going. Our times included a lot more staying inside with reading, resting, and stories. Audio books were a plenty and I will never be able to listen to Maisie Dobbs books on audio again without thinking of my mom on her recliner, eyes open, mind alert, body tired. Sometimes she would doze off and I would gently wake her to see if she wanted to head to her bed for an afternoon nap. “I should, shouldn’t I?” she would reply, only to doze off again one or two times before going. In between all of this, I heard stories of childhood and beyond. I was taken back to her elementary years, to an older girl Evangeline walking her home from school and laughing and scolding her for having the lofty dream of attending college. “Oh Pauline! What makes you think you can go to college? Your mom and dad never finished eighth grade!” Scarlet, more from the anger that erupted in her than Evangeline’s chiding, she vowed that she’d show Evangeline! And she did.

The stories moved on from childhood to college in Boston, a city she loved dearly, friendships with roommates Maggie and Ruthie, and falling in love with my father. What a gift to those who are older that they get to fall in love again and again through their memories, reliving the joys of those initial days like they were yesterday. Mom and Dad’s love story took place in the city of Boston where, poor as the proverbial mice that roam around churches in search of morsels, they bought five cent coffees and an occasional coke float. While I had heard many of the stories before, there were new ones that emerged, while the old ones were the more precious knowing that the storyteller would soon be leaving us, leaving me.

And the storyteller did leave. She left in the late fall when the golden leaves were creating heavy earth carpets, and the smell of wood fires was in the air. Now it is the spring and I miss her. I miss the almost daily phone calls that were sometimes check-ins and other times heavy with conversation and memories. We loved talking to each other about books – those that she was listening to and others that I was reading. I miss knowing that when I got back from a trip, she would be waiting to talk with me, to ask about it. I miss having her ask me about my kids. “How is Joel?” she would say, and I knew she really cared.

Despite the missing, I would not bring her back for an instant. She is in Aslan’s country, further up and further in, and it would be cruel to bring her back from glory to a place with only glimpses.

In truth, Mom left me with many lasting gifts that I hold on to tight with hopes that I can one day pass on the same – the gift of an enduring faith lived out in stubborn persistence, the gifts of reading and writing, the gifts of delving deeply into the scriptures and daily prayer, the gifts of learning when to speak up and when to keep silent. Most of all, the life-long example of a mom who knew how to love well.

On this Mother’s Day, I reflect on these gifts with a healthy mixture of tears, wistful longing, and gratitude. Though her presence is gone, the gifts remain, and I am deeply grateful. Honoring her is about entering wholeheartedly into the day with laughter, love, tea, and cake, expressing love and thanks to those around me and those at a distance.

I wonder as I write this – what gifts have you received from your mom? Whether alive or no longer here, what do you hold precious because of her?

Baby Showers and Belonging

Published on by Marilyn4 Comments

My younger daughter is having a baby! We have known for months, but as is usual in this space, I don’t often share specifics about my children. As people who were initially formed in my womb, I don’t go a day without thinking and praying for my adult children multiple times, but I created an unwritten rule for myself a while ago that I would not share my children’s stories. Some of them involve me, some don’t, but either way, there is a sweet, humbling, and critical connection with adult children that must not be severed by any writing ego.

But today’s thoughts are bigger than Stefanie or me, or the beautiful new life that is every day changing inside her.

Yesterday I had the honor of hosting her baby shower. The walls of our small city house expanded to fit two distinct generations of women – my generation and Stefanie’s generation. It was a brilliant, beautiful mix of wisdom and exuberance, of sweet naivete and humorous reality, of skin free of wrinkles and age spots and skin that is marked by time, of bodies that have set into older maturity even as we try to cajole them into something less squishy and young bodies that bounce back from childbirth like Winnie the Pooh’s Tigger.

Because we know her baby is a girl, every one of us opted to go against the trend of genderless beings by reveling in ruffles and pink, bows and the sweetest little socks and shoes imaginable. Why are little girls’ clothes so much cuter than little boys, I ask you?

The food was a an equally beautiful mixture of savory and sweet with chicken salad, hummus, cheeses and dips sharing space with thick, chewy brownies made by Stef’s husband Will’s Aunt Carol, and the most beautiful lemon, raspberry layer cake with the inscription “April showers for a May Flower.”

Beyond the surface was a reality for Stef and Will: they are deeply loved. They have people who surround them with love and appreciation for who they are and what they will bring to this little baby’s life. Over and over, friends and family spoke of the combination of exuberance, kindness, love of life and love of sports that they will bring to their little girl. I loved reconnecting with, as well as meeting for the first time some of Stef’s girlfriends as they surrounded her with beauty and love, as well as a good deal of laughter for her sense of drama and her husband’s calm. They are in the delightful stages of early marriage, pregnancy and forming families of their own. There was an unspoken sense of belonging and security that I could see in my girl, belonging and security that she will be tasked with bringing to the baby that is coming.

Like so many of us third culture kid mamas, I often feel guilt and sadness for the way I have moved my children from the proverbial “pillar to post.” They have picked up and moved multiple times, leaving behind the tangible in dolls, books, dollhouses, Playmobil, friends, schools and more, as well as the intangible gifts of belonging and security that we get when we love a place and people within that place. We moved Stefanie to this area in the middle of her sophomore year of high school. She exchanged the sun of Arizona for the worst winter the Northeast had seen in five years. Thinking back, I feel a bit ambiguous about that decision. But then I think about yesterday and the circle of love that surrounded this couple. Had we not moved, yesterday’s event would not have taken place. I felt the goodness of God in the land of the living, the goodness of God in giving Stef, Will, and their baby a place to come home to and place to share with others.

The cynical may push away the idea of things like baby showers, opting instead for Amazon deliveries to bring the essentials to our doors, but these events are perhaps more important than we realize. In life we need markers and milestones, times of stepping back to welcome a new stage or event, times of being surrounded with belonging and realizing what we have. In a fractured world, it becomes even more important to know that there are places where we belong. Perhaps baby showers are one place that can be, not about gifts or cake, savory and sweet, but about publicly announcing that a new stage of life is coming and that a baby is entering a world where she belongs.

Seasons of Life and an Impossibly Soft Couch

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“I wish I could come visit you, drink tea, and sit on your impossibly soft couch.”

The message came from a younger friend of mine, Sungyon, a couple of years ago. I met her while she was in graduate school doing brilliant research with robotics while I raised teenagers and young adults alongside trying to keep up with my job as a public health nurse. What differences we may have had in life stage didn’t matter as we shared cup after cup of tea along with heart stories. Our long conversations included the complexity of relationships with family and friends, faith journeys and struggles, and cross-cultural views on just about everything. We would curl up on this massive and impossibly soft couch that often seemed far too big for our city apartment but held so many dear memories that I couldn’t imagine getting rid of it.

Like so many in a university town, Sungyon ultimately defended her PhD thesis and moved on to a job in another area. The couch remained, silent witness to our conversations, to a friendship between two women at different stages of life who found joy and connection with each other.

There were other friendships forged on the couch – some that continue while others served a purpose for a time but because of distance, time, and our limited human capacity have entered the realm of memories. All the while, the couch grew softer with the accumulation of stories and memories.

Friendships weren’t the only thing that our impossibly soft couch witnessed. Indeed, much of life happened in that room. It was on that couch where we learned that our oldest daughter was pregnant, and we would be first time grandparents. I was curled up on the couch when I learned that there was an uprising in Egypt. Other happenings that don’t belong in blogs entered our lives by way of the couch, but they were made easier by the soft comfort of a familiar space.

Through all of the ups and downs of that particular season of life, the couch remained, sometimes changing location in the room but never forfeiting its comfort.

We’d sometimes talk about how much we wanted a sleek leather couch. One that had no cat fur on it. One that was smaller and more expensive, that told a story of success and sophistication. Basically, a couch that was the opposite of our messy lives. We would talk, but it seemed an unnecessary indulgence.

When we left for the Kurdish Region of Iraq in 2018, we left the couch behind. In truth, this was only one of many things we left behind. There was much to mourn and say goodbye to: a faith community that had taken a long time to enter, jobs that offered amazing benefits, purpose, and salaries, most of all family and friends that would be oceans away. With all those other losses, losses that had faces and names, we couldn’t even think about the couch.

An unexpected move back a year later saw us in a fancy furniture store shopping for a couch, and we did it! We finally bought the sleek, chic, sophisticated leather couch. It was beautiful – exactly as we imagined it would be. Gloriously different than we are. We tipped the movers well on the day they moved it into our little, red city house. It found its place and settled in.

But oh, how I miss the crazy, impossibly soft couch. I miss the way I curled up in it and it enfolded me with cushiony comfort. I miss the conversations and cups of tea. I miss the forsythia bush I could see reaching its branches toward the windows. I miss the cats that curled up on its broad arms. I miss the kids that came home from college and graduate school all over the world to have a taste of home. I miss the friendships that were forged and the laughter that was shared.

I miss that impossibly soft couch because I miss the season that it represents.

This weekend, a friend visited us; one who had never experienced our old Cambridge apartment or the comfort of our incredibly soft couch. Instead, she sat on the beautiful leather couch, curled up with a blanket and a couple of soft pillows behind her. We talked, drank tea, and nothing else in the world mattered. And it was both good and right. The couch offered space and comfort, becoming a silent witness to a growing friendship and creating new memories.

This new couch will never be impossibly soft, and perhaps I’ve learned something about what I really want instead of what I think I want. But it can still be a memory maker, becoming softer and more precious from the moments shared and the people that enter and exit our lives.

Something is Always Leading Us Home

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The window of our plane showed a grey sky and light rain, leading me to sigh inwardly. We had just arrived in Boston after six days in Savannah, Georgia. The weather in Savannah could be described as – well, perfect. Light breeze, no humidity, and between 65 and 70 degrees every day. The old oak trees that are quintessential Savannah were magnificent, their Spanish moss (which we found out was neither Spanish nor moss) gracefully draped across branches.

Coming home to a place where your body and soul don’t always feel like they belong can be a challenge. When I look out the window as I fly into Boston’s Logan International Airport, I think ‘why are there so many trees?’ It is a disconcerting feeling, a sense of alienation instead of belonging. As I make my way through the airport to ground transportation, I go into another space between – that space between the airport and the home we have made in Boston. I walk through the chain-link gate of our small city house and through the door. I know from experience that I have to immediately do something tangible, something concrete that says to me “You’re home. Rest. Breathe.” Sometimes it’s arranging flowers, other times it’s baking bread, still other times it is just getting unpacked as quickly as possible and removing suitcases from view. Once I have done that, my soul begins to settle – at least for a time.

What I have come to know is that my struggle for home is not unique. I have also come to a greater understanding of a spiritual reality that I have known since I was a small child, but that has grown in its theological significance through the years. And that is that no matter what home I have or find here on this earth, there will always be something leading me farther up and farther in, something always leading me to my true home.

Heimat is a German word with no English equivalent. It is described as “the first ‘territory’ that can offer identity, stimulation and safety for one’s own existence” and can only be found “within the trinity of community, space and tradition; because only there human desires for identity, safety and an active designing of life can be pleased.” I think that the only humans who ever truly experienced heimat are Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, that perfect place designed by God for his creation. Only in that space was a perfect trinity possible. In a broken world something always disrupts the trinity of community, space and tradition.

Our entire lives can be taken up with the quest for home, the longing for home. And yet, once we think we have found it, something interferes with the perfect trinity we think we have and we find there is something more.

Something is always leading us home. I thought about this as I watched my mom enter her final journey this past fall. Her yearning for home was both spoken and unspoken, a longing fulfilled on a cold November night as her breath stopped, and she entered eternity.

My mom’s longings find an echo in my own heart and soul, a poignant reminder that throughout life’s transitions, moves, stages, and travels something perennially leads us home, not to a physical shelter but to a place of secure identity and complete belonging. My inward sigh is replaced by the deep comfort of knowing that this longing is woven throughout the human story, ultimately guiding us toward that place where the trinity of community, space, and tradition are perfectly restored in the presence of God.

When I’m 64

Published on by Marilyn6 Comments

Would you indulge me as I reflect and cry a little in this space?

I turn 64 tomorrow. Depending on where you live in the world, it means I’ve either far exceeded the life expectancy, or I have many years to go. Either way, I’m feeling and thinking about many things.

I think it began this morning as I listened to beloved children’s musician Raffi sing “Everything Grows and Grows.” 

Everything grows and grows
Babies do, animals too
Everything grows
Everything grows and grows
Sisters do, brothers too
Everything grows

This song is one of my favorites and as I was listening to it the tears came unbidden, and I let them. I had just finished scheduling some medical appointments online and my body’s frailty despite fairly good health was on my mind. We are immortal beings living in mortal bodies – bodies that face all sorts of indecencies and difficulties. From ingrown toenails to brain tumors, we groan and sometimes lose hope. At 64, the “to do” list on our electronic medical charts gets longer and makes us face reality – our bodies are aging. With this, we know we have some decisions to make, and a number of those have to do with acceptance and attitude. I don’t want to be someone who gives everyone around me an “organ recital” as I age. I don’t want to hate my body or blame the God who created me, and yet I see how easily it may be to go down that dangerous path.

I want to accept my 64 years and what they have brought and taught me with joy, gratitude, and a healthy dose of humor. Because let’s face it – the aging body and process can be funny. Perhaps the funniest is that you see yourself as 24 and all your 64-year-old friends as – well, maybe 84. You can’t believe how much they’ve aged! You pat yourself on the back and then you catch a reflected version of yourself in the blackout windows of the car and you clutch your heart thinking “I thought Grandma K was dead! What’s she doing in my car?!” You think about how you should maybe take an exercise class, get rid of some of those unsightly bulges – and then you think “Nah! I look pretty good. Pass the cinnamon roll.”

Getting older is almost like changing species, from cute middle-aged, white-tailed deer, to yak. We are both grass eaters, but that’s about the only similarity. At the Safeway sushi bar during lunchtime, I look at the teenage girls in their crop tops with their stupid flat tummies and I feel bad about what lies beneath my big, forgiving shirts but — and this is one of the blessings of aging — not for long.

Ann Lamott as quoted in The Washington Post

The physical piece is just the beginning. The harder piece is emotional, for in a society that loves beauty and youth, it is easy to feel irrelevant. It comes through subtly and consistently. Unless you’re famous, like Ann Lamott, your life experience, earned fact as it were, is not seen as important or relevant to our fast-paced world. When at a public event, you can see the eyes of younger people look over or through you. There are surely more interesting people in the room to talk to. You want to connect with people, but do they want to connect with you?

Ready to inhale a massive dose of self-pity, you suddenly stop yourself and think: Hold on! It isn’t about me. Life just isn’t. It’s about something so much bigger, better, and more lasting. It’s about loving well the generations that will follow me. It’s about making sure they know that they are beloved, that they are precious. It’s about showing grace even when faced with those who are not gracious. It is about forgiving when you feel misunderstood and hurt, about forgiving when you are not being forgiven.

What do I want 64 to look like beyond medical appointments and fear? Beyond irrelevance and unsightly bulges?

I want it to be a year of peace and joy, of smiling at the future. I want to invest in my kids and my grandkids – another coming our way in May. I want to love them with abandon. I want to see more of my girlfriends, to go out to breakfast and right the world. At our age, we should be able to. I want to learn how to decorate cakes and become a better communicator. I want to write words that are full of life and grace, that point the reader to something bigger and better than me. I want to walk through crowded bazaars in places I love and drink coffee in unexpected coffee shops. I want to go to a Bollywood exercise class and laugh at my mistakes. I want to love others well. I want to grow more compassionate and meet the unexpected hard things without fear. I want to honor the struggle – mine and others. Most of all, I want others to see the God I love, to witness his work and love his world.

64. It’s a lot of me and a lot of life. Will you journey with me on this? I sure hope so!

Faraway Family

Published on by Marilyn2 Comments

Boston is cold. This is the first thing I think as I step out of Logan International Airport, arms heavy with bags and suitcases, and head toward ground transport. The airport is busy as travelers, eager to get on their way with weekend plans, rush or amble to airport gates with their coffee, bags and kids in tow.

This morning we left sunny California where we had 10 beautiful days with three of our children and their growing families. A grandson who is definitely cuter than your grandsons (insert laugh emoji) was part of the package and the soft feel of his body falling asleep on my chest will not easily leave me. How amazing is it to witness a future generation growing? To be welcomed as a part of his life? Though I love words, they fail me as I think about this.

We left as a beautiful sunrise made its way across the western sky, flaming colors transforming an airport into a blaze of otherworldly beauty and light. We left and an ache settled into my heart and body.

Ten days does not feel like enough. I felt the same when I left my oldest daughter and her family in early December. Those grandchildren are older but still young enough that they are wide-eyed with wonder, challenging any cynical or weary adults. Life is a daily adventure of exoskeletons, seeing the stars with their naked eyes, and digging down to the water table (these are their words, and they are way, way too smart for me.)

And I think about how Boston is cold, and Boston feels lonely. I ask myself as I’ve done so many times before – are families really supposed to live so far away from each other?

I come from a long line of movers. My paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather both arrived as immigrants in the United States – one from Leeds, England and the other from St. Petersburg, Russia. They were both children and they left extended family in their countries of origin. My mom and dad were first generation Americans, born and raised in Massachusetts. Unlike their parents, they left Massachusetts as adults, a young married couple with one baby. They traveled eight thousand miles, entering into a completely different way of living than either of their parents, raising their children far from extended family.

Yet, the people who stepped in as proxy uncles and aunts were as much a part of my life as any relative could ever be. Dr. Mary, Auntie Hannah, Auntie Bettie….the list goes on. I think about them every day. They reflected grace, love, humor, and care to me and my brothers. It is hard to find that same dynamic in the United States. As much as I want to say that a church, faith community, or a chosen family fills in those gaps, I have to search hard to see it reflected in the same way. I don’t see people dropping everything to cuddle a baby or make a meal. I witness more apologetic requests, asking for help with hesitancy and a side order of guilt. Guilt that we can’t cope on our own, guilt that we are needy, guilt – dare I say it – that we need people to step in when we are sick, or sad, or have a baby, or just because. We are created for community, created for more than a solitary life. Monks give up the world to live apart and pray for the world, but they know the importance of community and they live it every day.

Are families really supposed to live so far away? I pose the question to a few friends and the responses are quick. No. No – they aren’t. My friend Brit adds to that “I think no, but also it is just a part of the brokenness of the modern world.” There is much truth to that statement.

Faraway family has become normal in a world of displacement. There are those of us who have chosen to move, and those who are displaced through force, not by choice. I think of the massive displacement and death that Palestinians are facing daily and my heart settles into a dull and constant ache for these faraway families. I think of those still held in captivity, taken now months ago and feel an equal ache.

Despite seeing more of this in the modern world, my faith tradition tells me that none of this is new. Families have been torn apart for centuries, some by force, some by choices both good and harmful, and others following a God whose ways are mysterious, whose purposes often show up in future generations not in the generation that makes the move. I think of Jesus, whose birth Western Christians have celebrated, and Eastern Christians celebrate tomorrow. His birth was a transition from one home to another. He left a home where he was one with God the Father and entered a place where he would be both worshipped and mocked; adored and rejected; believed and killed because of disbelief.

He knows what it is to have faraway family, to feel forsaken and alone, to long for the day when he would be reunited. And somehow, he will continue to use faraway family and those close by to remind us of who he is, and who we are; to remind us that we belong, and that family is bigger than we can imagine; to remind us that we are not alone and that our griefs and joys matter; to continue to work out the miracle and mystery of salvation and redemption.

As we move into our Orthodox celebration, we will sing a Nativity hymn “Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One, and the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One! Angels, with shepherds, glorify Him! The wise men journey with the star! Since for our sake the Eternal God is born as a little child.” And in singing, I will remember this journey from heaven to earth, so that family and all of creation could be redeemed and healed to the glory of God.

Shielding our Joy During Advent

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This past weekend I had the joy of celebrating my oldest daughter at her pinning ceremony acknowledging her completion of a master’s degree in nursing. In a sea of white coats, my daughter wore gold satin, and I couldn’t have been prouder. Annie has worked long and hard for this degree. Prior to even applying for the program, she had to complete a number of prerequisites and she consistently excelled despite the demands of parenthood and more. We celebrated joyously both that day and the following with a party in her honor.

It’s a tricky thing to enter into joy when the world is on fire. There is a sense of guilt and wrong about it, a ‘why do we get to celebrate while others are suffering?’ question in our heads and hearts.

And yet…refusing to enter into joy does nothing for the suffering. It does not bring about a ceasefire. It does not help bury the dead or comfort a mother whose grief is too big to bear. It does not stop the humiliation of men stripped to their underwear and blindfolded and it does not bring back any hostages. Refusing to enter into joy may seem like a martyred response of solidarity, but I would propose to you that it is the opposite.

It was in Pakistan and the Middle East where I learned about joy through suffering. It was in that part of the world where important lessons were lived in front of me, where I first learned that entering into joy during a hard season was not an act of betrayal. There was Alice who lost a baby girl at the hands of a stray bullet. Yet Alice knew how to laugh, knew how to live well in the midst of suffering. There was Dr. Carol Hover whose husband died in her arms in a head-on collision on a dusty road in Pakistan. He was a gifted doctor and they worked together providing medical care to those most in need. Dr. Carol’s joyful spirit in the midst of learning how to live as a widow with four children was a hallmark of her work and life. Even as I write this, I think of my friend Joanna who has been going through experimental chemo treatment that hurts her body in unimaginable ways, and yet every word, every post is written with an overarching theme of joy. There were and are so many others who lived joy out loud in the midst of some of the hardest things in life.

The service of compline in the Book of Common Prayer specifically speaks to this in a line that I’ve written about before. These words are said toward the end of this beautiful service marking the close of the day.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer, page 124

Shield the joyous. The words shout at me this Advent season. For despite all that is going on around the world, joy will still be lived out, often by those who are suffering the most. It is a taste of the goodness of God and a testament to the strength that God gives. This joy is a gift to our world, and we are invited to respond by entering into God-given Advent joy. Practicing joy this Advent could be the one of the most important things we do in a world that is burning up with sadness and suffering.

So, I pray for all of us this season, that we will trust our joys and our sorrows to a God who is big enough to take on all the suffering in the world and yet still shield the joyous.

Author’s note: You can read more details of these stories in my book Worlds Apart: A Third Culture Kid’s Journey

Eulogy for Pauline Alice Brown

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Friends – 9 days following my last post, my mom died. I had the honor of delivering her eulogy. Here is what I said:

It was my profound honor to be at the side of my mom, the woman who birthed me, as she took her last breath and ended her journey in this world.

It is now a profound, albeit daunting, honor to give this eulogy in the presence of so many people who knew her and loved her. It feels especially important to thank my brother Tom and sister-in-law Terry who cared for her and my dad so well, giving them a home during their last season of life. You gave her a home that teemed with life, with family, with grandchildren, with Allison and Paul and Margot, more recently with Tami. Moreover, you provided a gathering place for our scattered family. We are so grateful.

95 years is a lot of years. Last spring, I said to mom “Think about it Mom! We throw away toasters after 15 years, refrigerators after 25, you’re 95!! You’re amazing – so much better than a toaster!” My mom wasn’t impressed.

When I think about the span of my mom’s life, two pictures come to mind. 

The first one is the only picture we have of when she was a baby, probably around a year old. The photo is black and white, and the baby is looking straight at the camera, short brown curls framing a round face with sparkling eyes and a big smile. The second picture is a picture of my mom on the day before she died. She looks tiny in a hospital bed at Advent House. My brothers and I surround her as she gives us orders so that she doesn’t look too awful for the picture. Little binds those two pictures together – except the eyes. The sparkling eyes are the same.

So many stories, so many years, and so many photographs stand between those two pictures. Truth is, none of us knew the Polly of the early stories. For Baby Polly, firstborn to Stanley and Cyrena Ruth Kolodinski became a little girl with a fierce drive that set the course of her life. Those early years are best characterized by  “I’ll show you!” That was the Polly who was in junior high school and talked about going to college. “Hmph!” said her Polish father. “What does a girl need with college?”

Polly didn’t talk back. She just determined in her heart that she would show her father. On her graduation from Gordon college, he was the proudest man in the room.

It was during this period of her life when she heard a large man with a strong Swedish accent speak about missionary work in the country of India. Her heart responded and she made up her mind right then that she would be a missionary. She didn’t have a clue what all that meant, but the fierce determination embedded in her response was real.

The little girl Polly became a young woman who walked back from the Fenway area of Boston one summer night, starry-eyed from her first kiss with Ralphie, the brown-haired, blue-eyed college student who had captured her heart. When her girlfriends excitedly asked if he had held her hand, she looked at them and said “Hmmhmm” – clearly she was not one to kiss and tell. We know the end of that story.

A few years later, she stood on the deck of a ship, looking young and sophisticated, wearing white gloves, a fashionable hat, and pearls around her neck. No one would guess looking at her that she was headed to the country of Pakistan, a place she had never been, to serve a God she had begun to love as a little girl.  Polly was on her way to bear witness to the incarnational love of Jesus.

She writes of leaving the shores of New York in her first book Jars of Clay: (Read page 7 paragraph one)

And so they did.

Pakistan became home and ten thousand stories were lived that included five kids, many different homes, studying and speaking two languages, learning to love well, entering the courtyards and lives of Muslim friends and neighbors, finding an extended family of fellow missionaries and Pakistani Christians that went far beyond borders, and walking with God when there was light and during the dark tragedies of life.

The thread woven through the story is the thread of faith, and no matter at what stage or story you met Polly, you would soon learn of that thread. You would learn of a faith that took her to Pakistan and back, a faith that sustained her during deeply lonely times in Pakistan, where family and familiarity were an ocean away. A faith that saw her through every age and stage of her life. A faith that continually led her to repentance and grace. And a faith that was challenged in these past couple years and months.

If you met my mom in more recent years, you knew her in the winter of her life. You met her during a time when she could no longer serve others in the way she longed for. Instead, she had to call on others to help her. For in recent years, she struggled. She struggled with feeling invisible. She struggled with the feeling she had outlived her usefulness. She struggled to trust God with a body that was no longer serving her well. And she had an increasing ache of homesickness for her forever home. The thread of faith I think sometimes felt thin to her, like it might not hold the weight of aging. Roles were reversed as instead of her encouraging us to stay strong in the faith, it was us encouraging her. Her faith was buoyed through visits for yummy desserts at Phillips European with her dear friend Peggy. It was buoyed through times with her dear JoMarcia, her nurse but so much more. It was buoyed by the family and faith family that loved her.

At 9:40 pm on Sunday, November 5th, she ended her journey.

And today we say a public and formal goodbye to Pauline Alice Brown – wife, mother of five, mother-in-law, grandmother of seventeen, matriarch to a multitude and counting of great grandchildren, friend and mentor to many, storyteller and writer, sustained by and through faith.

My mom once said that she was sorry that she and my dad were not leaving her kids anything, nothing “of value”. I looked at her in astonishment. “Not leaving us anything? Are you kidding? You’ve given us everything we need and more.”

On her bedside stand was the true evidence of what Mom left us for it was there that I found index cards with the names of every family member, prayers that she daily prayed for us. I found a prayer list two pages long with names of so many of you who are in this room. My mom’s legacy is here in this room and beyond. Her obedience, love, and honor of God extend through the generations.

So, tell them – tell them the stories of Polly and her God.  Tell them the stories of family and faith, of who God is and what he has done, for the God who held her stories for all those years, holds all of ours.