Friday March 17, 2006

Memory Lane

Yesterday was the thirty-second anniversary of my mother’s death – March 16, 1974.  She was only fifty-two.  I was thirty and pregnant with our youngest daughter. 

She had a cancerous tumor that burst several weeks before she had any problems.  By the time she had pain, it was too late, as the mass of cancer had spread through her stomach area.  She died two weeks after entering the hospital.

In September 1973 she handed me a small baggy of six or eight crocus bulbs as a gift for our tenth wedding anniversary.  I still remember her saying, “This is not a very pretty gift, but they will be pretty in spring.”

These pictures were taken yesterday.

Because those few bulbs bloomed for the first time in March 1974 – the time of her death – they are a wonderful reminder of her.  I never purchased other crocus bulbs, so that as they multiplied and I moved some to other flower beds, they would still be crocus’ from her.

* * *

Yesterday afternoon as I was watching my brother Clair working the ground, I thought, “Daddy would have enjoyed sitting on our patio and watching the field activity.”  He loved the farm.  He died in 1997 at the age of seventy-seven. 

The house just over the top of the tractor is where he grew up and where he and mom raised me and my four siblings.  Daddy’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather also owned and cultivated the same land. 

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.  Psalm 16:6 NIV