“Look at this.” I showed my sister a handmade Christmas card from one of the boxes. “Mom wouldn’t look at me or talk to me all day. I followed her around the house like a puppy dog and wouldn’t let her go till she forgave me.”
“Oh, how sweet,” Colleen said, studying the colorful card made out of construction paper. “‘Merry Christmas to Mom and Dad. Your loving daughter, Josephine.’ How old were you?”
“I don’t know. Grade school age. One of those class projects right before the holidays. I gave it to her early, trying to see if it would help.”
“Help with what, Jo?”
“I was trying everything to get her to look at me, I was pleading with her to forgive me.”
Colleen hopped up from the floor. “I think I’ll take a break,” she moaned, “while you’re taking a walk down memory lane. We’ll never get through all this stuff at this rate anyway. I never knew Mom and Dad were pack rats. Let’s see if there’s any brownies left.” Colleen grabbed my hand to lift me up.
Making room on our parent’s kitchen table, we set out stained cups and cracked ceramic plates. “We don’t have to wash these,” Colleen laughed, “we can just throw them out. Salvation Army can have the rest.” We drank coffee and devoured our brownies.
“What in the world did you do?” My sister asked, picking bits of walnuts out of her brownie.
“Who knows, I don’t remember, probably my mouth. All I know is that I couldn’t stand her not looking at me. The look on her face, I must have hurt her with words. I was sorry immediately, I remember. I had to see her face, for her to smile at me. She wouldn’t look at me, she was ironing and ignoring me.”
“So, you got out the big guns and gave her your homemade Christmas card?”
“I guess. I asked Mom if she remembered that day the last time I visited her in the hospital. She said she remembers the card and me following her all over the house. I wouldn’t give her any peace. She told me I was driving her crazy; she finally put down her ironing and looked at me.”
“Jo?” Colleen interrupted, “why did you bring up an old childhood memory to Mom when she was dying?”
“We were talking about spiritual truths. Our relationship to God as a loving Father. How we are his children. He’s a real person to us, although God. Such a mystery.”
“So, did Mom take your card that day?”
“No. I remember Mom hugging me and smiling down at me. Then she told me to put the card back under the tree and go out and play.”
“But Jo, God doesn’t make us beg him to forgive us. Doesn’t he forgive us when we ask? We don’t have to plead.”
“We were talking about it from a child’s viewpoint. How a child feels toward a parent, a father or mother. God tells us to come to him as a little child. We plead with him to not turn his face from us, ‘To smile upon us.’ To look at us again after we’ve sinned. The correlation of my card representing ‘works’ that I thought I needed, in order to be forgiven. All God wants is us.”
“Wow,” Colleen said, “I used to hang on to Dad’s leg while he was walking, pleading with him for a toy or whatever. Ha! Can I do that with God?”
“Just don’t give him a card! ‘Nothing in my hand I bring.'”
“That’s wonderful, Jo.”
“That was the last time I talked to Mom. She died a couple days later, you remember. She knew it and so did I that this was probably our last visit together. I think she saw in my eyes that I didn’t want her to leave us, first Dad and now her.”
“I miss them both, Jo.”
“Before I left the hospital that day, she told me God was smiling at me, that she could see his face shining upon me.”
“Is that the last thing she said to you?”
“No, she squeezed my hand and smiled … and then she told me to go out and play.”