Joy in the Morning

Today I sat in the car as Howard ran in for a purchase on the way home from the funeral of Clara, our pastor's wife.  It couldn't have been worse weather for a funeral.  The leaden sky was flinging stinging little spits of mist born by the swirling north wind.  We are under a blizzard watch, but so far the few flakes I've seen haven't made it to the ground in the near-freezing temperatures.

There is a strange beauty to the trees I glimpse though my streaked windshield.  The bare branches somehow are managing to look more wintery than when they were blanketed with snow, as if they are colder with no covering. Maybe it is the right weather for a funeral after all,  with a somber, grey heaven weeping icy tears, cascading in a watery flood down the face of the glass.

Strangely, I have wept few tears today, and then only while empathizing with the families of the loved one we are remembering.  I thought of my own family and sorrowed for them with vicarious tears if it had been I who had passed.

Just then the plaintive, familiar notes of a song sung at the funeral of my own mother wafted out from the car radio.  I recognized it as "Beulah Land," the song I had requested for her funeral, since her name was Beulah.  Whether for memories of her or for the one who who would be laid to rest today, the tears started as I thought about these two ladies.

Though they were both spiritual giants, they nevertheless were very human with all the quirks and foibles of their own personalities.  Today in the eulogy one of the sons referred fondly to his late mother  as "The Turtle Whisperer."  She loved turtles!  Whenever her birthday came around, she got miniature ceramic turtles, turtle-themed gifts, or turtle jewelry.  I gave her a box of chocolate turtles once, the carmel-pecan treat that mimicked a turtle shape.

"She really did!" he exclaimed.  "She would whisper to them and they would come and eat!"  She had seven that lived in their back yard.  "They were all named, too!" her son concluded.  I think the turtle thing got its start during the many years they lived in Arizona.

Clara's first husband had died when her youngest son was ten years old.  All three boys liked wrestling, and she was an avid fan at their matches, loyally (and loudly) cheering them on from the sidelines.  She knew wrestling holds and was not above taking down an opponent of her own, if she could get a volunteer female relative to accept the challenge.

Mama had her hands full with eleven children, her only hobby that I can think of being crocheting.  She did have a love of horses, though, and sometimes reminisced with us about her girlhood horse, Dudley.  We went to drive-in movies as a family back then, and I remember her saying, "I love a good horse picture."

Mama has been in heaven these many years now, and our friend has just arrived.  Maybe they'll meet up there and laugh about their earthly days and their present joys, for both had a wonderful sense of humor.  Just thinking about them has me smiling, if through tears, and the barren landscape is now becoming a beautiful carpet of snow, maybe several inches before morning!