Uncle Mary and Aunt Finn. I’m not sure why I got their names tangled as a child, and sometimes still do. But I never tangled up my feelings toward the people my family shared so many adventures with. Most involved children and critters; the outdoors and all things water. I looked more forward to camping with Finn and Mary and the cousins than I did to birthdays, and I remember those times better, too.
Someone told me one day – I can’t recall who – that Aunt Mary and Uncle Finn weren’t my “real” aunt and uncle, only my parents’ very close friends. The news dismayed me. Perhaps they’d leave our circle, like most friends do. Go their own way and take our cousins with them.
That didn’t happen. Long after we kids grew up and away, Uncle Finn and Aunt Mary stayed close to my parents. And over the next many decades, whenever I connected with them, it seemed we had never been apart.
Shortly after my mother turned 95, the Preacher and I visited her and Dad in their Chilliwack retirement home. The visit included a trip to Finn and Mary’s own “downsized” home. Mary served coffee and her trademark crispy oatmeal cookies. And while the men swapped boating stories, she showed Mom and me the house.
A vertical frame of several photos hung in the hallway. Mary stopped. “My siblings,” she said. “They’re all gone now.” As she named them, she touched each face.”It’s sort of an odd feeling, knowing your turn is coming,” she said. I detected no fear, just intelligent wondering. The same kind of bright curiousity that had accompanied her through life and that, years earlier, spurred her to use the computer to explore the world and keep in touch with the people she cared about.
Aunt Mary read my columns online. Every so often, she posted a response on Facebook. She made her final comment after I’d written about visiting a derelict house, and how faith in Christ brings eternal hope of restoration, even in the face of dereliction. She responded with the words, “This tugs at my heart.” From her viewpoint of ninety, I understood why. I understood it even more when, barely two weeks later, Mary died suddenly.
When I heard the news I thought of the last time I saw her, two months earlier. She and Finn had stood with my family on a green, green hill under a very blue sky, beside a tidy white coffin, sprinkled with pink roses. My mother’s coffin. God had pressed pause on the beautiful relationship the two women had shared for over seventy years. Both had always known this day would come. They also knew that they’d continue their friendship “over there.”
Some of my readers have already – or will soon – bid farewell to precious friends. To long relationships filled with sunny days and happy memories. May God comfort you, walk with you through the shadows, and bless your memories with hope.
