3:01 p.m. on December 15th

She was one of the young wives I had just met in a new town. Her husband was attending classes at the Seminary. He wanted to be a missionary in a foreign land, so foreign that he would need a pilot’s license to fly there. 

 She was a shopper like me. We loved talking as we walked from one store to the next all over the huge mall near our apartment complex. We were wives of ministerial students, and the fact that we had very little money to spend did not diminish the fun of window-shopping.

One December afternoon, we pushed a shopping cart through the narrow aisles of a discount store. There were just a few Christmas gift items that we needed to find and it was payday, the 15^th of the month. Our husbands would be home soon, so we hurried to the check out counter. I was at the front of the cart busily unloading and separating my few items from Karen’s when I realized that she hadn’t responded to the last comment I had made. I turned to look back at her, but I saw only a ghostly white face that didn’t seem to go with the slight frame of my new best friend.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. The cashier was ringing up the items unaware of the panic that was rising from somewhere deep inside me. “Karen, are you okay?” She didn’t respond. She didn’t seem to be able to see me. Was she going to faint? Did she even have a pulse? I had never seen anyone instantly turn such an awful shade of gray. What was she looking at on the ceiling? Her eyes were glazed and I knew she had no idea where she was at that moment. I looked at my watch. 3:01 p.m. Instinctively I knew that I would never forget 3:01 p.m. on December 15.

What was she saying? “Karen, what are you saying?” I almost whispered to her. She wasn’t saying anything. She was singing. Very softly, she was singing a hymn. Somehow I paid for all the items in the cart, and managed to get her and the shopping bags into my car. I had to get her home immediately, before I lost control completely. I thought everything would be okay when she got home. Kent would be home by the time we got there, and he would take care of her. I needed to get home, too. All I could think about was getting back to our apartment complex as quickly as possible.

Karen continued to sing in the car. “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,” she sang in a hushed voice. Then for a few minutes she hummed another familiar hymn. She had not spoken a word to me, and she was still that very strange color of pale gray. As my car coasted to a stop in front of the stairway to her apartment, I could see our pastor standing at the top of the steps. “Good,” I thought, “he will know what to do with Karen.” It didn’t really seem strange to me that he was waiting there on the top step. I thought he must have been there to visit with Kent and maybe he had been invited to supper. Without a word, Karen gathered her things and gently stepped out of the car. She stood there smiling at me as I drove away. I waved, but mostly I wondered, “What just happened?”

Quickly I put the purchased items away, and began preparing to cook dinner. I hadn’t really planned to cook a big meal, but it just seemed like the right thing to do. I found myself preparing to roast a whole chicken with a pan of homemade dressing. I would add a vegetable side to go with it, I thought. It seemed like seconds later that I was opening the oven to take out a golden brown roasted chicken sitting atop bubbling hot dressing. It smelled wonderful, and I was just about to take it out of the oven when the phone rang. I don’t recall what was said, but I realized that our pastor was speaking to me. I hung up the phone without knowing whether I had spoken a word.

Kent was dead. He was 27 years old. How could a brilliant young seminary student die? He wanted to get more flight experience over water, so he had signed on with one of the oil companies to transport executives out to the oil rigs and back to their plush office suites in downtown New Orleans. At exactly 3:01 p.m., his plane caught a tower wire and burst into flames. Exactly at 3:01 pm on December 15. Our pastor had been waiting outside their apartment door to deliver the grim news to this 23-year-old widow.

Another seminary wife, was watching their two-year-old daughter, and she offered to keep her until family members arrived. I wrapped up the chicken and dressing to take to Karen’s apartment. I realized that it was never meant to be our dinner, but had been prepared for those who would come to comfort her. I don’t remember the rest of the week. I don’t remember when she left campus or how often we talked on the phone over the next couple of years. I just know she was the first widow close to my age that I had ever known.

There really is no ending to Karen’s story. Those of us who have lost a loved one in a tragic instant have found that there is no ending. My place in her story would resume at a later time, but for the moment there were others who would hold her hand. Family members came to take her to the safe place called home where she could rest and prepare to begin a new journey. 

"Sing unto God, sing praises to his name, extol him that rides upon the heavens by his name Jah (the Lord, most vehement), and rejoice before him. A father of the fatherless, and an advocate of the widows, is God in is holy habitation" (Psalm 68:4-5).

LORD, thank you for giving a song in our hearts even in times of grief and sorrow. We praise you, O God, for the protection you provide for the widows and the fatherless, and we thank you for the comfort of the Holy Spirit in times of sorrow. In Jesus' name, Amen. 

The American Flag Through the Eyes of a Veteran

The phone call had surprised me. Jerry’s brother, Claude, was saying that he was passing through town on the way to his weekend guard duty. Could he come by and visit with us? “Sure, that would be fine, but Jerry is out of town, gone to a training class for his new job,” I answered. He said he would still like to come by to see the kids. I answered his knock at the door, and thought how much more he looked like his dad. Usually he looked so much more like Jerry, but age was favoring his dad now that he was over 40. Claude, Jr. was the oldest of the seven brothers and sisters. Jerry was in the middle somewhere.

The kids were clinging to his pants legs and he carried Gloria riding on his foot as he made his way to the sofa. He hadn’t been able to get here for Jerry’s retirement at the base. No one in the family had made it. It had been just the guys in the squadron and me. We wisely chose not to bring the girls and baby Lee. I had driven to the base by myself, and Jerry’s commander and I tried to talk him out of retirement and back into another tour of duty. The recent promotion to Sr. Master Sergeant had come with a remote tour overseas. Jerry was the most committed family man I had ever known, and he was not going to leave his family. I knew that I was not going to the island of Guam with a newborn and two little girls. Retirement was Jerry’s only option in his way of thinking. The only thing I remember from the ceremony was fighting back tears of regret for the shortened military career of a man who had never planned to retire less than Chief Master Sergeant. I knew that the regret would eat him alive from within and that I would be the reason for it. I vaguely remember seeing him receive the flag that had flown over the Capitol in Washington D.C., which was provided by our state representative. We sort of knew him because his right-hand-man was an active member of our church.

“Oh, I want to show you Jerry’s flag!” I said to Claude, as I rushed down the hallway to get it from the bedroom where it was mounted in a triangular display case. I took it out, and said, “It flew over the Capitol, you know.” As I turned to face Claude, he stood to his full height and reached his arms forward to receive the American flag. As I walked across the room toward him, there was a hollow ringing sound in my ears. I heard my voice, as if it were very far away. I didn’t have time to think about what I was saying. My eyes locked with those of my brother-in-law and the world blurred into slow motion. I watched his face as the flag slowly passed from my hands to his. I saw his eyes drop from my face to the stripes of red and white and stars on a field of blue. Somehow I knew that I would never see this man again. I swallowed hard, and I forced the dark, bitter-strong thought from my mind. He was beaming with pride and his eyes glistened as he looked at this precious symbol of the freedom he had fought for in Viet Nam. I was faint and nausea was rising in my throat as the brown carpet swirled at my feet.

Jerry came home that night and I made my voice light and unconcerned as I told him how Claude had played with the children, and that I hoped he didn’t mind that I had taken the flag out of the case to show it to his brother.  When the phone call came from their sister three days later, I was not even surprised. I drove out to the base, and I wept as I told Jerry that his big brother, Claude, had died. He didn’t seem to understand what I was saying at first, and then he put his hand on his forehead and sank back in the chair at this desk. I never told him of the slow-motion premonition. I don’t recall ever telling anyone at all.

We drove to the family hometown in north Alabama. It didn’t occur to us to drive over to the base where Claude had been serving weekend guard duty, although it was only a couple of hours from our house. When we arrived with all the children in tow, Grandpa’s house was full of family. As an only-child, this big family had taken some getting used to for me. We sat in the kitchen with the rest of the family trying to comfort their daddy. He was a man of very few words, and there were no words at all for this day. Someone finally said that he wanted his oldest boy brought home, and that it just wasn’t fair to have to wait a week for the funeral service. I didn’t fully understand, but I knew something was not happening the way it should be. Why would they wait a week to have the service? The sisters put together an explanation about the confusion that was delaying the body being shipped home. “See, Claude, Jr. was in the Army Guard, but they sent his troop to work at the Air Force Base in Florida,” the sisters explained. “The Army has no control over when the Air Force will release the body,” they continued, “and Daddy is upset about it.” 

I walked to the phone and said, “I need to make a few calls, ok?” Our church office had the phone number for our state representative’s right-hand-man. After thanking him for sending Jerry’s retirement flag, I told him about the circumstances we were facing. I explained that Jerry’s brother’s body was being held at the base at Eglin and the Air Force wouldn’t release it.” 

“Do you know where I am?” this friend-of-our-family asked. “And, do you know who is right here with me?” he continued. I had no idea that he and our state representative were at that very moment at Eglin Air Force Base. The number given to me by the church secretary had been forwarded to a meeting room directly across the street from the office where the decision would be made to release the body of my husband’s brother that same afternoon. 

How marvelous are His ways! We all acknowledged that God had indeed intervened to unravel the red tape on our behalf.

"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways untraceable!" 

Romans 11:33

LORD, thank you for the riches you give us through your wisdom. You know what we need even before we experience the loss and sorrow of grief. Keep our tender hearts in your care always. In Jesus' name, Amen.

I Should Have Known

When you go to the grocery in the middle of the afternoon, you see all sorts of folks you don't see there on the weekend. Usually, I would have been working in the middle of the day. But since my mom's last stroke, I had been running errands during the day for my parents. It seemed there was something they needed from the grocery or pharmacy every day. This day, I was hurrying through the store aisles.

As I turned the corner of the last aisle, I saw a lady from church. I had often seen her at the nursing home where her husband had been living for several years. She would be there patiently feeding him lunch in the dining hall and faithfully caring for his every need. 

We greeted each other in the grocery as she asked, “How is your mom?” As I began to tell her about Mom's second stroke, she asked if I had heard that her husband had died in February. “No,” I said, “I had not heard about that. I am so sorry.” And then she began to tell the story of his final day on earth.

“It was the day before Valentine's Day,” she began. “Remember how hard it rained that day?” she asked, and I nodded as I recalled the the stormy weather. She continued, “He sat up in bed that day and said, 'Look at all that rain!' And I said to him, 'Who are you?' Because he had not spoken that clearly or even noticed the rain for months.” And then she told me that later that night, he had died in his sleep. Her eyes tightened and her cheeks flushed as she said, “I should have known, because he was so different.”

My mind drifted away from our conversation as I wondered how many other widows have said that same thing, “I should have known.” Recalling my own husband's death, I thought "Certainly, I should have known." I still remember how I sat up in bed feeling the presence of angels around me. “Reach out to him.” They didn't speak out loud of course, but I could hear them urging me to reach out to him. I did not. At the time, I thought I had good reasons not to wake him in the middle of the night. It's one of those things that I've wanted to do over so many times.

Later when my mother died, sixteen months after the first stroke, my dad said that I should have been there. My children and I had been there so many other times in the middle of the night, but not that night. So often we live in denial of the obvious truth. And yet when that one thing which is impossible to know finally happens, we blame ourselves by saying, “I should have known.” The truth is that no one can know the day or the hour of the passing of another person or even know of their own death. There are reasons why these things are known only by God.

"And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest? Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field, and to morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith? And see not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knows that ye have need of these things. But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you." 

Luke 12:25-31

Lord, Thank you for reminding us that you know us intimately even when we don't understand the circumstances surrounding life and death. Thank you for providing for us all the days of our lives. Forgive us when we try to second guess your plans. Help us to rest knowing that you are in control of everything. Thank you most of all for providing eternal life through your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.