Tomorrow would have been her birthday, but cancer interrupted her vibrant life. Last January marked 15 years since the untimely death of a wonderful friend, my late wife Mary Lynn. I marked the anniversary in January with a post about loss, legacy and renewal, but then my website underwent major surgery and I lost that post.

So today, I am re-posting that note.  In the bizarre Corona virus environment of today, somehow the title seems apropos – that our bleakest prospects have the potential to blossom into beauty in ways we can hardly imagine at the time.

She had been my wife for almost 35 years, but I still recall that bleak January afternoon like yesterday, the warmth of loving friends, the silent sobs of my children as they bade their mother farewell. 

As a seasoned pastor I was familiar with graveside emotions, but this time, as husband and father, the desolation was deeper than I had ever known. 

And then, as surely (and slowly) as the snow melts, spring flowers bloom. As January slips towards June, the bleakness of our losses give way to beauty.  

Mourning and memories walk hand-in-hand. MEMORY is that mystery of our minds whereby sights and voices and experiences are stored and retrieved. At first, they are raw and bittersweet, but in time they ripen into cherished friends. We savor and share them; we reflect on them, perhaps edit them a bit and archive them again. What a rich and awe-inspiring gift that preserves our past and restores it imaginatively indefinitely for the future.

Another gift that transforms the bleakness of loss is what we call LEGACY, that gift of one generation to the next.  That’s why my children embody a thousand of their mother’s finest qualities (and one or two of her lesser ones). My grand-kids were only two and one when their Grandma died, but today they are preparing for college. They carry not just her DNA in their genes, but her love of music in their souls, her impulse to laughter and playfulness in their personality, the warmth of her love for Jesus in their emerging and teen-age faith.  And the years ahead will reveal how some of the deeper currents of her legacy have invisibly been shaping them.

Eventually, of course, all our memories and legacies will fade. So, we install bronze stones to defend against Time’s amnesia. But there is a secret lurking in the cosmos that easily eludes us – hints and clues that suggest something beyond our wildest dreams.  Cemeteries may humble us but there is a Love that permeates all things. 

The trees surrounding the cemetery were once tiny acorns or maple keys, now grown tall, strong, alive.  They were buried in the earth but stand today as parables of resurrection. Listen closely and you can hear them whisper songs of joy, despite their groans and the cursing of the gravediggers.

And one day when the new creation overtakes the old, everything – our memories, our legacies and life itself – will be made new in the unfailing promise and beauty of God’s love.