It is hard to believe four Sundays have come and gone since my life and perception of it changed forever. Sundays have always been a special day for me, but now they hold an even greater significance. Now I will cherish and reflect on the promise each Sunday brings even if my heart aches….

To celebrate the last day of winter I embarked on a farewell-to-my-winter-of-discontent journey to the top of Mount Brown in Glacier Park. It was a bluebird day and as I hiked through the woods I could hear the promise of Spring- of new life abounding – in the songs of the birds which turned my thoughts to my Mom. My mother loved to watch the birds and the squirrels, and of course our four-legged family members; the little joys the Lord gave us to make our lives richer, more wonderful here on Earth. These blessings made her life sweeter and more joyful these last several years of her life; our conversations always included a synopsis of Tucker the dog, squirrel, and bird activity of late.

As we entered Holy week, a time when we look to the promise of resurrection and life everlasting with our Lord, Jesus Christ and rejoice in His conquering of death so that we may all live free from its bonds through Him, I took comfort in knowing that my beautiful mother conquered her earthly bonds and journeyed home to live free with her Lord and Savior on Palm Sunday, the first day of Spring!  Her spirit left us quite unexpectedly but peacefully that morning, through an open window, perhaps following the song of a bird calling her home.

Our Lord, Jesus Christ led me and my family on a new resurrection journey that week. Not once did he waiver in holding us in His embrace. From the moment I learned of my mother’s death on Palm Sunday, I was comforted in faith – knowing her Easter journey had begun. Still, it was the longest, most exhausting week of my life as we bore the cross of death – enduring feelings of such immense sorrow, heart-aching emptiness, and regret over things left unsaid, time not spent, preparing to say a final good-bye. Yet as we laid her to rest on Good Friday, an unexpected strength and desire to celebrate her life rather than grieve her death came over me.

As we sang her favorite hymns I sang out clearly, I sang my best- willing the throat gripping tears away, knowing these were her sending songs. And as we placed her earthly remains in the cold, wet ground and shivered in the cold wind and rain saying our final good-byes, I knew she was safe and warm in the arms of our Lord and Savior. Her life on earth finished. Her story finished… for now.

When Sunday morning dawned. we celebrated the promise of Easter anew, with assurance that her story will live on. She danced in heaven as the trumpets sounded that He Is Risen! And yes, so had my Mom! Risen, Indeed! While she has a new life with Jesus, her earthly story will live on through each of us who carry her in our hearts. I will honor her life through mine and be happy, as that is all she wanted me to be.

I have shared with you in the past about my relationship with my mother and the regrets I have experienced in these last months over the state of our relationship. Unfortunately, so much was left unsaid, a truth that I will forever live with.  In what may be a selfish attempt to find peace, I felt a need to not only write the final chapter but profess to my mother before God and those that loved her, the feelings deep with in my heart.  What follows is my eulogy for my beloved mother, Evelyn Morck.

(Following on the heels of my brother’s wonderful synopsis of the richness our mother brought to his life.)

Memories of my Mother

I have always been a bit envious of my big brother as with his advanced age he got to enjoy more fully, our Mom in her best years. Alas my fondest memories are found in my childhood…

Being the child of a former schoolteacher my life was one big lesson. Back to school time was a golden time of year. My mother filled me with excitement and anticipation as I returned to the classroom with new school supplies and a new Snoopy lunch box, packed with a PB&J or turkey sandwich, Cheetos, and grapes. She never got tired of making the same thing over and over again, and I never got tired of the wonderful notes she always included inside… something to make me feel good about that day. I loved getting notes from my Mom in my lunch box, especially when I was once again the new girl in town and bullies made sure I felt like the ugly duckling. Mom’s notes always chased those feelings away, at least for a little while.  I never bought hot-lunch, not because of the length of time standing in line took away from my playground activities (as I espoused), but because then I wouldn’t get to read her notes.

During her best years, my Mom dressed to the nines in classics that made her look exquisite. She was confounded by my aversion to shopping and preference for flannel shirts and jeans, but always managed to sew me some very nice outfits, even into my high school years. She even sewed my high school graduation suit – a pale pink sheath and jacket. That was the last time I wore a pink dress as I haven’t found any as appealing as that classic style. Yet despite her classiness, she loved to comment on farts and the art of passing gas… going as far as to explain methods she learned in college to relieve it to anyone willing to listen.

My mom was involved in much of my brother’s and my youth activities. She was a terrific Brownie leader, stepping in when no one else would to keep our troop going after our leader was in a car accident. I remember the Halloween party we had for the Brownies at our house one year – she went all out recruiting my brother to make haunted house sounds at just the right time and boy was he successful! She gracefully put up with hundreds of boxes of Girl Scout cookies inundating our home and under her leadership, my Brownie troop made headlines in the Rock Springs Rocket Miner numerous times… much to my delight. To this day I support the neighborhood Brownies and Girl Scouts in their endeavors.

My mother helped with Confirmation, and she was the school volunteer extraordinaire – spending countless hours in the library, more often than not keeping rabble-rousing Junior High students in line (much to my horror).

As the only Mom that didn’t work outside the home, she was also the neighborhood mom for all the kids whose parents weren’t home, often having 8 or more of us crowded around the table for open faced cheese sandwiches and hot chocolate along with supervision after sledding or playing War in the woods until parents came home from work. Our home was the neighborhood haven even into junior high when we were supposedly too cool to have parental supervision—everyone still happily congregated at our home within ear and eye-shot of my mother.

My Mom was a great Mom to travel with, at least when I was five on our Bicentennial trip across America. She sewed the two of us matching outfits in fun yet stunning styles and I felt like a queen. She was my back seat buddy and sang along to the eight-track tapes that came with our brand new 1976 Buick Regal. Those songs became the sound-track to some of my happiest child-hood memories (Rollerball, Free Spirit, Almost Heaven West Virginia, Country Boy….)

One of my favorite times spent with my mother was during our 3-year stint back east in Virginia. My parents bought a modern 3-story colonial home that backed up to the woods. It got very dark at night and our first winter there my Dad was away for almost a month for work and my brother was away at college. We would walk through the house together each night, making sure every door was locked and all was sound. She would tell me stories of her days as State Champion Majorette, as the Dean of Women at Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp, and about her apartments and her adventures with her room-mates and odd land ladies as a teacher in Livingston. Each story always had some moral lesson for me swallow. We would eat supper together in front of the fire on TV trays, and because it was cold and damp she would let me get dressed in front of the oven in the morning before school… even if it meant I missed the bus… she would gladly take me to school. In fact, as a youngster and teen who was subjected to quite a bit of bullying for being the new kid before bullying became a bad word- my Mom did what she could to keep me safe –perhaps going a bit too far at times, but one thing is for sure, she always had my back.

Ah yes, the memories of childhood and grade school, a time in my life when things really did seem golden, for the most part. Certainly, there was childhood angst and family kerfuffles, especially when my Dad was gone on one too many business trips for my Mom’s liking or we were moving once again.  We were your typical 1970’s -1980’s middle class family except that no matter where we lived, my parents had the distinction of being the oldest parents on the block, by 15 years at least.

Those were the good days, days and the memories of which, I took for granted for far too long. Alas, life has a way of challenging us and my family was not immune to challenges, especially the kind that make emotions raw. For some, those challenges become too much.

As the years wore on and I grew more into my own person, our mother-daughter relationship began to fray. We became more and more opposed in our approaches to and outlook on life.

Indeed, ours was a difficult relationship, but then, the things that matter most in life are not always easy. Nonetheless, I know she loved me as deep as any mother could love a head-strong daughter.  While I often wished we could have a relationship like those my friends enjoyed with their Moms, one filled with lunch dates, laughter, and dreams for tomorrow – I came to accept that those things were not important to my Mom.  Counselors told me I needed to set boundaries in our relationship but how do you set boundaries between yourself and the person that gave life to you? While fences make good neighbors, boundaries do not address the conflicts that created the need for them. However, putting a physical boundary of 400 + miles between my mother and I with my move to Whitefish 2.5 years ago changed the dynamic between us. On visits home we still engaged in rapid fire from time to time but during our phone conversations, rather than constant head-butting, my Mom seemed to relish the fact that though I was living my own life, she could live vicariously through me in her old stomping grounds. Yet by this point in her health and our relationship, our conversations never ventured much past the surface.

Since my mother became ill, I have learned much about what is important in life and the lesson has been painful. The past conflicts between us that remained a barrier to my heart have raked my heart. The fact that my mother and I could not realize a reconciliation of any meaningful depth fills me with deep regret. Why had I not pursued this with my Mom sooner? My hopes are such that the pain and anger we inflicted on one another disappeared into her lost memories as I am not sure she could comprehend the feelings I wanted to express. Part of me feels at peace in the simple sweet conversations that we did share. Perhaps that is God’s grace reigning over my ineptitude. I have learned that life is finite. Its seasons far too short for anger, guilt, pride, and selfishness to linger in our relationships. Storms will come and we do not know when or how they will end.

King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes:

“As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.”

Solomon was wise.  Life is meaningless if we do not tend to what truly matters. All the fun, work, accolades, and treasures of life we collect along the way are meaningless. What matters are the relationships we have; that our hearts are right with God; that we resolve conflicts with those we love; that they know they matter to us; and how very much we do indeed love them.

Reconciliation with my mother was a selfish goal of mine. But how much more powerful and life giving it would have been had I been able to make peace with my mother while she was alive and not as I stand before you today in an attempt to honor her life and role as my mother.  Perhaps it is best and all I can hope for that my Mom and I pursued the springtime memories of our life as we walked through her final winter together.

I last spoke to my mother on my birthday, 18 days before she passed away. It was a conversation I will never forget. Aside from the fact she was upset that I would be celebrating alone and didn’t have a special dinner date (Hey, I had church and choir practice, what’s new?) she just kept saying all she wanted was for me to be happy and would I consider coming home. I kept telling her I was happy but I had too many mountains left to climb to think about coming home –but that didn’t mean I didn’t miss her. I told her I loved her so very much. Her last words to me were:  I love you and I just want you to be happy.

One of her favorite songs was “His Eye is on the Sparrow”.

His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me.

His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me.

I sing because I’m happy;

I sing because I’m free;

His eye is on the sparrow

And I know He watches me.

I know He is watching her, shine and sing once again. She couldn’t have been called home in a more perfect way. The first day of Spring and the day we began the celebration of Easter.

Mom, I know we had our struggles as a mother and daughter but I will forever carry with me your sweet love of the joys of life, the tender ways you loved me through childhood, and your simple understanding of what is good. I will continue to strive to live the kind of life you so wanted for me – one that is happy and lived for the Lord. I never stopped loving you and I will always hear your voice and feel your love whenever a songbird sings.

And when I do, I will sing because I know you are now happy, and I’ll sing because I know you are free. And I will smile at the sight of every sparrow, because then I’ll know you are still with me.

Let me leave you with my heart… don’t hold on to conflict. Let God’s grace wash it from you and walk in forgiveness and reconciliation with those you love. Open your hearts and your minds to the promise of Easter, of new life, of new beginnings. Let Easter live in your hearts and relationships today and every day.

 

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

~ John 14:27