The Letter Sent in Time

Thirty-four Father’s Days have passed since my father died at age 63. Had he lived, he’d be nearing one hundred. And while I miss him still, the memories come with no regrets because of a letter I wrote just a few months before his sudden death. I turned my experience into an article that must have touched a raw nerve, for it’s been published about twenty times. I’ll condense it here, hoping the message will be something you need, too.

Tears poured down my cheeks as I prepared to write my dad that September morning. In five days he would sit alone on what would have been his 38th wedding anniversary. My mother had died three months earlier of cancer.

I reflected on Dad’s tender heart toward his wife and children. Mom had chronic asthma, which worsened in rainy, moldy Washington state, where they were married. Believing doctors' counsel that she’d do better in sunny southern California (this was late ‘40s, before the smog got bad), he left his job and moved to unknowns in Los Angeles, where I would be born. Although a college graduate, he sold kitchen pots door-to-door until he got work in his chemistry-related profession. Together they worked out frugal solutions to one-income living so that Mom, with her medical issues, wouldn’t have to work. He supported her art and sewing hobbies, even helping her tie quilts and mark hems. Together they served the church and para-church groups.

I remembered his tender heart when at seven I had rheumatic fever and was given a fifty-fifty chance of living. He carried me into church to save my strength. At my mother’s death bed, as she lay struggling to breathe, he read to her from Psalm 116:15, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” As we waited for death, he held her swollen hand until his head drooped in exhausted sleep.

I spent the summer after her June death with him, but he insisted I go forward with plans to start graduate school 2,400 miles away from the family home. I’ll never forget his hug, tears, and prayers as we said goodbyes beside my packed car.

I’d been reading through Paul’s letters in the New Testament. Over and over the apostle had expressed thanks: “I have not stopped given thanks for you” (Ephesians 1:16); “I thank God every time I remember you” (Philippians 1:3); “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you” (Colossians 1:3); “I thank God, whom I serve, as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers” (2 Timothy 1:3).

If Paul could tell his spiritual children how thankful he was for them, why couldn’t I tell my dad how thankful I was for him? Many times, of course, I’d told Dad that I loved him. But now, more than ever, he needed that affirmation. He needed to know why. I found a card at the campus bookstore that said, “Even when you feel alone, God is there.” Inside that card, I poured out my heart, expressing my love for him. I affirmed him for specific ways he cared for Mother, my sister and me. I suggested God had lots more for him to do.

Dad never mentioned getting the card. When I called, he was too emotional to say much. I didn’t dare ask. Ten weeks later, just before Christmas, I got a phone call from my brother-in-law. Dad had died suddenly of a heart attack.

As the single daughter, it fell to me to move home and empty out the family home and handle probate. That had been Dad’s desire before I left; he’d put my name on accounts to facilitate that and showed me where his will was. As I began what would become nearly a year’s task, I wondered about that letter. I asked a close neighbor and friend if he’d ever mentioned a special letter. She said yes, and that it meant a lot to him.

I really wanted to find it, but where, in such a full and cluttered house? January passed, then February as slowly I sorted out his and Mom’s belongings. I found old birthday cards, my grade school papers, and letters ten and fifteen years old. But not that letter. Then in March I got to the closet where luggage was stored. In the pocket of the suitcase he used on a trip just before his death, there it was. He had kept it with him, even on a trip!

I opened it and re-read it. Though tears, I had that sense of “rightness” over my transparent message of appreciation and gratitude. And I thanked God for prompting me to send that note of love—in time.

Mothers and Aunties

Taken in the late 1930s, this photo
is believed to be my aunts Vera
and Agnes (L-R) with three of
what would be six brothers.

“I’m putting Mom on the phone,” said the caller from the other end of the nation. “She can’t hear you, but she wants to talk to you. So just listen.”

At that, my cousin handed the receiver to my Aunt Agnes, deaf from complications of kidney failure. I began crying as I listened to her tired, whispery voice tell how much she appreciated my newsy family letters.
After a few minutes, her daughter got back on the line and said her mother was done talking. As I hung up, I realized how even a little thing—writing about my family and sending photos—meant a lot to this aunt who loved her big sister, my mother, so much. Mom had died at age 59 of cancer, and my dad of a heart attack six months later. I was orphaned at 31, still single. My mother was the second child of a family of nine (two sisters, six brothers) to die.

I think about my mother and her siblings each year as Mother's Day comes. I feel the commercialized hype of gifting mothers that day limits the picture of those in nurturing roles. I do feel blessed to be a mother, having waited for marriage until age 34 and then having children at 35 and 37. Now grown and on their own, those children have honored me by making godly choices. And while I missed my own mother, feeling the pang of her not knowing these grandchildren, I had a dear, servant-hearted mother-in-law. Living next door to us the last 20 years of her life, she had full participation in their lives.

As for my aunts, my letters to them in a small way helped carry on the legacy of my mother, who so faithfully knit her large family of origin together with an investment in postage. All had struggled from their impoverished beginnings (their father was a Norwegian immigrant farmer, the mother disabled with a short leg as a result of polio). The father died young of a heart attack, with the youngest boys still at home to raise.

Because they lived so far away, I didn't spent much personal time with my aunts. One lived a long time in Panama, then in Florida—completely the opposite end of the nation from me. The other lived in Sweden, Malawi, and finally Oregon. Yet both aunts cared about me as part of the family tree. When I had my first baby, Agnes sent a baby blanket richly embroidered with nursery rhyme characters. I’m sure it was her labor of love, as she was a skilled needle worker. My mother’s other sister, Vera, sent my second child, a girl, a couple toddler sundresses she’d sewn. I kept in regular touch with both until their deaths.

When Mother's Day comes with a sorrow of missing our own mothers, we don't have to stay there.  If we're grieving a mother who still lives, but was emotionally unavailable during a vulnerable time, it's important to move beyond resentment and love her despite her failures. And recognizing other adult women (related by blood or just friends) as important to us shows character and maturity. For me, the fruit of caring came on an ordinary day, like the one I answered the phone and just listened to a faraway auntie share her appreciation for the simple gift of letters. Through staying connected with her, more than I realized, I had also honored her sister, my mom.