A Memoir: In Celebration

We didn’t see her often, only at grandchildren’s graduations or special events over the years. The first time was when our son, Mark, and their daughter, Rhonda, were graduating from Bible College nearly 30 years ago. The next year, we were invited, along with all Mark’s siblings, to their house to get acquainted before our firstborns married one another.

That made us in-laws. Rhonda’s dad was a minister, while my husband was a business man. In an unexpected turn of events, Howard became a minister, too, finally submitting to a life-long inner knowing of his destiny. A few years later, he filled a position of Associate Pastor at Rhonda’s dad’s church. We got to know the family better, through associations at church and through our kids.

We also learned the endearing, if sometimes amusing, ways of the pastor’s wife, Sandy, who was also a receptionist at the church. She seemed to know everybody personally and could usually be found with an ear glued to the phone as she listened with genuine interest and unfeigned concern, often bordering on alarm, in her response to the caller. They loved her for that.

At the weekly staff lunches, she always took a ribbing when, true to her Texas roots, she would pull out a tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce, which was a permanent resident of her purse, and liberally adjust the dish to her liking. Full of fun, she planned seasonal staff outings, adding her bright smile and funny stories, while ever playing the consummate hostess, drawing everyone in and becoming the life of the party.

We were at their house last week to visit them and Mark and Rhonda, who were there for the Christmas holidays. Although we had seen the kids at our own Thanksgiving gathering, we didn’t want to miss another opportunity since they live halfway across the country. Sandy made a wonderful feast, pleading her kitchen was too small for help with clean-up afterward, then asked if I wanted to see pictures of the churches they had pastored for the past 50 years.

We went downstairs to the den where she pointed out their humble beginnings in a white-frame building where they had to sleep and live in rooms in back of the church. I saw pictures of Rhonda as a two-year-old cherub, and her sister a babe in her father’s arms. Her mother told of helpful big sister who flushed a diaper down the toilet, flooding the living quarters while Mom had to walk into the church service appearing unflustered as if nothing had happened.

The edifices in the framed photos became ever larger in the small parade of churches in their pastoral history, culminating with the mega-church we had been part of.

We were stunned yesterday, only a week later, to receive a call from Mark, his voice strained and unsteady, that Rhonda’s mom had been found unconscious and was in the hospital. He had already returned to church duties in North Carolina, while Rhonda had stayed on a few days to be with her family. His next call before he caught his flight to join his wife bore the worst possible news. Sandy was not going to make it.

The news was surreal as it soaked in. We had just been to their lovely home filled with her beautiful things, including a wall of full-length wedding portraits of their three daughters and their bridegrooms, one of which was our son.

Her funeral is Monday, but she won’t really be there. Surrounded by beauty we can only imagine, Sandy will already be in her ultimate House of Worship, the one where there are many rooms, where she will be waiting to welcome us Home.