Summer and it seems unusual, maybe odd.  I am here, at my sister’s house which is out of the ordinary for sure, for July.  

July is meant for sun and water and the lake really.  That cottage.  The little one surrounded by bigger, sprawling, barely visible and at a closer glance, beautiful ones.  Ours, the one I thank God for every time I pull in, is a gift.  It’s that place where, more than any other, I can sit and look, at water and sky and trees and beauty.   When I am there alone it is as though God has made that water, clean air, with me in mind.  

I not only see it.  I feel it.  

Beauty.  What God has made is beyond magnificent.

For years, maybe 8 although I lose track of them, Nano, my mother, has spent weeks there with me.   For those years it was the peak of her anticipation.  She drank in that beauty just as I do.  Her joy was full when she sat beside that lake and looked. Felt the air.   Breathed it in.  It’s a walk, from the wooden steps to the bottom of the stone steps.  Even I, feel my heart beating fast when I get back to the top after a time of sitting or swimming or paddling.  Even then, at the beginning, she was already old according to the number.

These Summers past, she has walked down and then up.  There was the year she sat, for fun, on the jet ski for a photo.  The next year it was just a bit too much to get herself Onboard.  Last July I noticed she was not as anxious to make the trek down, knowing it would mean the walk, up.  She was content to sit on the deck and look.

This year has brought more change and now, this July I am Here since she cannot be There.  We are sitting here.  She is watching as I cook and wash and water and all the while we are together.

She says every so often, with just a hint of a tremor in her voice, that her heart breaks at knowing her cottage days are over.  I nod and what is there to say other than, “yes, my heart hurts too.”  We could reminisce about those days, those years, but maybe for now we will remember in our own hearts.  Recall smiling times.  

Remembering together is hard.  Sad.  They were good days.  We had fun and we will both remember until memory is gone.

I read some verses tonight and God was living in those words.  He is.  Living in those words.  

Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.  Proverbs 23:22  

My mother’s children try to model these words.  I am far removed from her, often.  I am not here to do what needs doing.  My sister is.  She does the doing for all three of us.  US, consists of two girls and a boy and God has given us lives to live that have taken us, for much of our mother’s life, away.  We three have our own now.  Husbands, wife, Families, responsibilities, work, people.  Yet still, our mother is.

I walked into the little suite where she lives.  It was three days ago now and how can the days fly so fast?  She was waiting for me and I went in and there was that smile that  means, I am so glad to see you.  It has always been good to see my mother but now, each time is special.  A gift.  As she got up and found that cane and we prepared to go to my sister’s house, I glanced at her little table.  There was a cloth because of course she would never have a table without a cloth on it.  It is a small table and on one end is her sewing machine.  It isn’t much used these days but it sits at the ready.  Just in case.  There was a candy dish and it is the same one that sat on our coffee table a life time ago.  The candies are different but the dish is the same.

In the middle of the table which happens to be just a few inches from the other end, was a reminder of another time.  I had forgotten.  

There it sat and then I remembered.  The little house.  The manse.  The parsonage.  The preacher’s house.  It was closer to where I sit tonight than where I usually sit on a Friday night.  A little town, up the highway from this Alberta City.  A village really.  On all sides  as far as my 8 year old eyes could see, fields.  Beautiful, covered with wheat and hay and corn and we lived there and my dad, Papa was the preacher, pastor, caregiver, counselor, at the little church around the corner.  That little town was far away from where the preacher had left his parents and siblings.  Far away from the little village where Nano had left her loved ones.  It was a time when, leaving loved ones behind meant there was no plan to see them again.  Maybe it would happen and possibly not.  We went to the little church on Sunday morning and then came home for Sunday Dinner.  Rest time came next and quiet.  

Every Sunday.  Every Sunday, before our light supper, before we went back down the street to the little church, Nano sat herself at the dining room table.  It was always covered in a table cloth and usually it was lace.  She sat at that table and opened her Writing Pad and began.

There were letters to her mother, my nano.  Letters to her father, my grandpa.  Letters to friends, cousins, dear ones.  I watched every Sunday of my childhood as this mother shared her life, with those she might never see again.  Her handwriting was beautiful and never hard to read.  She wrote and signed and fastened the envelope and added a stamp and left them piled on the table for tomorrow.  Tomorrow, they were taken to the post office and from there they went to the ones who would read and remember and share and whose hearts would be full of joy at the arrival of “word” from this dear one so far away.  Oh how she must have missed her precious ones and yet never did she complain.  How blessed we are to see each other often.  Our World is small.  Very.  Far is not, really.   We are not together like some.  Stopping for coffee together.  Dinner, lunch, sitting, seeing.  Together is not often but it is precious, when.

She has lived hard and happy and sad and really hard and joyful and heartbreak and yet, 92 years later, she is.

 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.    James 1:17

We know, because we have read it, have lived and experienced it, that every good gift is from Him.  

We know and are thankful.

So, she is, living and whole although as her doctor reminded her some years ago, her body is wearing out.  It is and yet her heart keeps beating and God gives her life.

  Nano was telling me tonight that every morning when she opens her eyes she reminds herself  of

Psalm 118:24  This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.  

A golden reminder.  A way to start each day.