Love Story

When you survive something titanic, it makes you stronger. It can make you wise and gentle if you've learned the lessons well. In the end, you're not a survivor anymore. You've become who you were created to be.  (Richard Wagamese)

Our summer is turning out to be a busy one, but in the good sense of the word "busy." We have had several wonderful visits from friends we have not seen for a very long time. We have renewed our ties and strengthened our bonds. We have looked way back into the past when we were young and strong and felt like we could do just about anything. That's when we first met each other. Then came the times of testing and the times of weeping which life inevitably brings to the table.

We are close enough to each other to know about the boomerangs that hit us head-on, the waves that rolled over us until we thought we would drown, the panting on the shore that left us almost lifeless. We went through most of these times together.

How these events shaped us in the meantime and how they made us who we are today became a topic of discussion. Nancy and Becky (mother and daughter), who visited us, have both lost their husbands. Nancy's husband died of cancer just at retirement age; Becky lost her father. Only a decade later, Becky's husband died tragically, and again there was a double loss; that of a husband and that of a son-in-law. Years earlier, both Nancy and Becky were present when we lost our first-born, who lived only one day (see blog entry of June 24, 2014, "Remembering is a Way of Meeting"). These experiences have created a powerful bond between mother and daughter, as well as between us as friends.

Becky brought along two photo albums which she had created digitally. One is of her mother's life as depicted in photographs, a gift to her mom. The other is of her husband's life which she made for her sons. It is by looking at these albums that our discussions took root. It is also through creating the album about her husband that Becky said she came to love him again.

Those of us in our seventies and eighties have the privilege of knowing our story, because most of it is behind us. Sometimes, while looking back and reminiscing, we are amazed at what we all experienced and how we got through the hard stuff life threw at us. Just recently Hardy and I looked back in time by leafing through one of my "menu books." I am in the habit of writing down the guests we have hosted and what we served them, along with some comments. I began to do this in 1981 when we were still in Africa and have kept it up. Not long ago we were trying to recall some people we had hosted. We found the names of our guests and also what I had served that evening. These people have since passed away, but as we read about that day we thought of them and what that visit meant to us.

Lately I have been reading some published works in which the authors look back and reminisce. One is a collection of essays by men who examine their relationship with their mothers. The other is a memoir in which two women cousins, a professor of Bible and a pastor, write about their call to ministry while researching how various family members before them experienced this call. Both books discuss what it means to come to different conclusions than their forebears and still respect and honour the choices they made.

Christine Kampen, one of the authors of the memoir, writes:

This project has made me aware that it is best to exercise some humility when judging the faith practices of generations that have come before us -- they lived in a particular context, as do we. In years to come, what might our descendants say about our current faith practices?

I have often asked myself this question, and it has stopped me from being judgemental. Each generation has its context in which it struggles to be authentic. Each family has its joys and sorrows. It is good to have friends who walk with us through it all.