March Memories
Margaret Heins Severance
July 13,1922 - March 13, 2001
I recently came across a piece of notebook paper that bore my mother’s handwriting. What she wrote is below in the body of this blog posting. Another hand written printing of it is in the introduction pages of the scrapbook she gave to me when I finished high school and it holds photos and other memorabilia that range from my birth year up through my high school years. What a treasured labor of love it remains to be to me. It brings joys untold as I revisit those years and all they held.
March. It is the month when, in our North American hemisphere, the season of spring emerges bringing its promise of new life and hope after long winter months. It seems appropriate that the month of spring’s arrival was the time God ordained for my mother, Maggie, to leave her earthly home and enter in to the eternal spring where new Life and color-filled brilliance beyond our imaginings exists - reunited with her Creator. For my mother, whose life and smile brought joy and a sense of spring to all she met, it was indeed appropriate.
In the hospice facility’s room, where my mother lie during her last days, there was a window. Just outside the window, new life was beginning to bloom. Daffodils, primroses, and a flowering cherry tree framed my feelings that were grief ladened.
I had moved in to the room for what turned out to be six days. I brought in bouquets to set by her bedside along with other floral gifts friends and family had brought or sent. God was preparing me and I know that He was preparing my Mom internally for her time of leaving. Life is temporary here on earth, but life is not ending, although these kinds of earthly goodbyes are the hardest to say and experience.
God’s gift of life came to me via my parents - a gift for which I am grateful. In the writing my mother found to use as an introduction to the scrapbook of photos to mirror some of my early years, she found sweet expressions of her hopes and dreams that she wished for me.
They are ever appropriate thoughts to express for a life newly begun or a live fully lived. The author of these words is unknown to me, but all that they express were known by my mother and continue to be experienced by me.
During this spring’s month of March, I share them with you as I remember my Mom, her life, my life and the life that we have each been given as a gift.
I was just thinking . . .
If the seed that was to become you had never flowered, do you know what you would have missed?
The sun’s gold blessing on your head,
The sound of your own voice,
your own laughter,
your own tears.
The miracle of your own body, a beautiful instrument, designed for experiencing, learning, caring, achieving.
The sweetness of water on thirsty lips and the silk of it on dusty skin.
The taste of bread, fruit, meat, and all the mingled caress of their fragrance.
Long grass under your toes,
a bird in flight against a cloud,
the soaring ache of the universe beyond the stars.
The release of rain and the awesome anger of thunder.
The satisfaction of seeking and finding the peace of fulfillment.
A certain ecstasy at unspecified times and for unspecified reasons, yet somehow, a justification for living.
A quick recognition of love in the lines of a face, the touch of hands, in words left unsaid, in an act of kindness for no other reason.
Seeing again the same hometown, the same home, the same family as for the first time and seeing them in the full circle of existence.
The creation of a child, or a place, or a piece of something beyond self, giving your heart the right to beat for more than it’s own need.
The lights of man’s night and the night of God’s lights and you between, a partner of both.
The privilege of being allowed these years out of eternity to share the greatest adventure you can ever know . .
Life itself.
Lynn with brothers, David. Michael, and our Mom
1999
