Precious Memories

December 27, 2018

Today’s newspaper headlined an article about a local family who just after Christmas lost their home and everything in it to a fire. The mother had been sleeping on the couch and woke to see flames climbing the wall behind the wood stove, engulfing the second floor before she could get to the pets upstairs. Having lost everything, she was thankful that her children had stayed the night at her mother’s after Christmas instead of sleeping in their upstairs bedrooms. 

I’ve been thinking about losing everything. Mother Teresa once said, “You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” I believe Jesus is all I need, but I’ve never been tested as this mother was, so my knowledge is theoretical more than experiential. I’ve known many people who don’t possess a single item passed down from parents or grandparents; nothing to connect them with their past other than their memories. 

Linda and I spent the day with my 96 year old mother. We had planned on seeing her before Christmas, but had been exposed to the flu, and thought better of it. When we called to let her know we wouldn’t be coming, we learned she hadn’t been feeling well, so it all worked out. In more ways than one.

She wanted her bed moved, so my brother, Linda, and I tackled the job which entailed pulling some boxes out from under it, which my sister did. “Bring them into the living room,” mom ordered. “Some of grandma’s pictures are in it. I want you kids to take what you want.” These are no ordinary pictures. My grandmother was an amateur artist, and these were drawings and paintings she had done, dating back to the turn of the last century. Some were childhood drawings pressed in a sketchbook, while others were scenes she painted as late as the 60’s. The earliest dated sketch was from 1907 when she was fifteen.

How do you explain the connection with one’s own history brought to life by century-old drawings? Mere paper and pencil breathes life to my soul as I remember this diminutive little woman I called grandma who breathed her own life through her fingers onto those sketchbook pages more than a hundred years ago. Those tangible connections so many people have never had, I have never lost. I am blessed by these fragile papers and the memories they resurrect, and thank God for this priceless gift tonight.