How $20 Saved My Wedding Day 20 Years Ago

Most of my wedding day remains a blur to me.  Every time I turned around I was being introduced to this person or that person or being asked where this went and how I wanted that to go (not that I even knew since Angela had done most of the wedding planning).  If it weren’t for pictures, I’d have trouble remembering much beyond the fact that I got married.  But I do remember one guy and one gift.

Angela’s boss, Jon, had driven three hours from Abilene to DeSoto for our wedding.  During her senior year internship she’d worked for him and after she graduated, he’d offered her a job.

When we’d finished taking pictures in the sanctuary, we walked into the church fellowship hall for the reception.  People were crammed inside the room shoulder to shoulder.  Jon made his way past a few people and shook my hand.  As he did so, I felt him pass me a folded piece of paper.  He smiled at me as he did so.  ”Just in case,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, not knowing what he’d given me.  Maybe a note with a piece of advice.  Maybe it was a check.  We’d gotten a few of those in the mail.  When he walked away, I opened my hand and saw that he’d passed me a twenty dollar bill.

No one had ever let me in on the fact that people did this at weddings.  Maybe there would be an upside to sticking around and shaking as many hands as I could at my own wedding reception.

Well, after lots of hugs and handshakes, I learned that the twenty dollar handshake wasn’t a common practice, but an act of generosity on Jon’s part.  He was the only one who’d given me twenty bucks.

****

We walked the gauntlet out of the church and were pelted by rice before driving away in my blue Dodge Colt.  Having been occupied with shaking hands and meeting people at the reception, I’d barely eaten any food.  I’d so wanted one of the seven chocolate chip cookie cakes baked in the shape of heart, but they proved to be a big hit with everyone else as well.  We dropped off our luggage at the Red Roof Inn (the nicest place two very broke college graduates could afford) and we drove back to an Olive Garden that we’d seen on our way.

We feasted on complimentary breadsticks and salad before devouring our main courses of Chicken Parmigiana and Ravioli.  With all the anxiety and stress of the wedding over the previous few weeks, this was the first time we could finally relax.  The waiter cleared our plates and asked, “Would you like some dessert?”

“Of course,” I answered.  We’d been married for a couple of hours.  We were on our honeymoon.  We ought to splurge.  Besides, Angela’s grandfather, taking pity on our impoverished selves, was funding our honeymoon.  ”One cheesecake, please.”

Even splurging has its limits.

While we finished eating our cheesecake, the waiter put the bill on our table.  I checked my pockets, but couldn’t find my wallet or the checkbook.  I always had them.  I’d used my wallet when I checked in at the hotel.  Where was it now?  ”I don’t have my wallet.  Do you have your purse?” I asked.

She looked around.  ”No,” she answered, “Maybe I left it at the hotel.”

How were we going to pay the bill?  I reached into my front pocket, hoping that maybe my wallet was there, that I’d missed it when I checked the first time, but it still wasn’t there.  However, I did find that folded twenty dollar bill.  I pulled it out and showed it to Angela.

“Jon,” I said with a smile and then told her the story of how he’d passed me the money.

That smile disappeared when I looked at the bill.  We were still short three dollars and twenty cents.  This was pre-cellphone so we couldn’t call anyone to bring us some money and even if we could, we’d have to count on them being at home to answer the phone.

“Let me go check the car,” I said.  I left Angela sitting at the table and walked out of the restaurant to my Dodge Colt.  I couldn’t believe this is how our married life was starting, struggling to pay for our first dinner as a married couple.  I hoped our future wasn’t going to be like this moment.  I opened the car and crawled around, emptying anything I could find, sticking my hands under seats and below seats, looking for every penny- literally- that I could find.  I returned to the restaurant as my pockets bulged with dimes, nickels, and pennies.  Lots of pennies.  Not a single quarter.

I counted the money on the table and found that we had three dollars and twenty-five cents in change, just enough to pay the bill, but with nothing to leave for a tip.  We piled the change on top of the twenty dollar bill.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.  As we were getting up, our waiter returned.  He looked at the mound of change and then at us.

“Sorry,” I said and then we rushed out of the restaurant, relieved that we’d been able to pay the bill.

****

As embarrassing as that moment was, we were only able to pay the bill because Jon slipped me a twenty dollar bill.  I don’t know what he thought when he handed it to me, that maybe we’d buy an ice cream cone  and a Coke with the money, never being able to remember him or his gift in twenty years.  But neither Jon nor his twenty dollar gift will never be forgotten.

You never know what twenty dollars will mean to someone else.

The Day Before The Wedding, Dad’s One Question, and The Meaning of Love

Frenzied activity best describes the day before our wedding twenty years ago.  Last minute arrangements were being tended to, family and friends were arriving, everyone seemed to have a question or a comment, and we still hadn’t gotten to the wedding rehearsal.  All the activity left little time to consider the fact that in less than twenty-four hours I’d be married.

Married!

Me married!

I didn’t have the first clue on how to make a marriage work.  My parents divorced after I finished the second grade.  Mom remarried, but then divorced again three years later.  Dad never remarried.  Nearly all of my friend’s parents were divorced.  How was this thing supposed to work?

Angela and I took part in six pre-marital counseling sessions and those helped us talk about marriage, but we were just talking about it.  We weren’t married.

The thoughts consuming me had little to do with whether or not I loved this woman, that was a given, but I didn’t have the first clue on how to make this marriage thing work and make it work forever.

People kept offering advice, most of which I think they believed was helpful (and it might have been for them) or wished that someone had told them.  Yet, I wondered if they considered the message about marriage they were conveying to me with their words.

“The first year is hell,” multiple people told me.  How was this supposed to help me with marriage?  Did they want me to go with my guard up, armed for combat in the most intimate relationship between two people?   Were they trying to tell me not to get married?

Others said, “Marriage is work.”  Again, really?  I’m going to need to work at this relationship?  Some of them even added, “You need to go to conferences and read books on marriage.  It’s like working out, you have to keep at it.”  People were not making this relationship, this life-long commitment, sound all that appealing.

I don’t say this to discount or invalidate their experience.  I know that the first year of marriage has been hell for some.  I know that marriage has been a challenge for others and that some have worked diligently and consistently to work out their differences and issues with their partners.  Everyone’s marriage is different.  Each marriage is made up of two unique people with different views and backgrounds and problems coming together.

Yet if these descriptions of marriage were going to be true, I wasn’t sure that I wanted in.  I wasn’t nieve enough to believe that feelings and romance and infatuation would last forever.  After all, we’d been dating for nearly three years.

But, I wanted to be with this girl more than anything.  I’d never found a person like her and I wanted to find a way to make it work.

Maybe I didn’t get it and maybe I didn’t understand and maybe everything would change when we did get married.  But to me, it seemed like a person’s view of love dictated how the relationship would go.  I heard a lot of “I did this and this is the response (negative or total lack of) that I got.”

I decided to release any quid-pro-quo expectations.  I let go of any thoughts of “If I do this, then she will respond like this and do such and such.”

To me, the novice, it appeared that the meaning of love and the basis of marriage was “I will love you without expectation.  I will try to give you my best and my all because I want to give it to you.  I give you my best because I want to give you my best.  I surrender the outcome.  I do not choose to love you in the hopes that you will love me back or that you will be similarly nice and generous to me. I act in love towards you out of love.”

But what did I know, I wasn’t married yet.

****

Dad and Jason, my younger middle brother, arrived.  I took them over to the townhouse I’d rented for the three of us for the night.  We wondered where Mom and Rob, my youngest brother, were.  In the days before cellphones, we couldn’t call them to track them down.  We sat around and waited.

They finally arrived an hour later than we’d expected.

“You gave me the wrong directions,” she said to Dad.

“No, I didn’t,” he replied.

And for the next five minutes I was transported back to when I was seven years old, watching them argue, this time about the directions and who had given the wrong directions or who had not followed the directions.

I looked at my watch.  ”We need to go to the church for my wedding rehearsal.”  I got in my own car and drove to the church by myself.  I kept thinking about the advice people had given me and my own lack of experience and my own thoughts.

The rehearsal was a rehearsal.  Stand here, walk there, now stand here, kiss the bride, and walk down the aisle that way.  I was tired and kept yawning, a fact that my friend Lisa kept chiding me for (the things you remember).  Even though we’d spent a year planning this wedding, I didn’t care who did what or if the whole thing went out of order.  As long as the minister signed on the dotted line, we would be married.

From the rehearsal, we went back to Angela’s grandparents for the dinner.  We’d graduated from college two weeks prior and were flat broke so we’d asked her grandparents if we could have the dinner at their house.  I ordered as much barbecue as two hundred dollars could buy.  The highlight of the dinner was David, my best man, throwing Rob into the swimming pool.

After the dinner ended, everybody went their separate ways for the night.  When I got back to the townhouse later, Dad was still awake, standing in the kitchen.  Jason had gone to bed or was watching TV.  I sat on a stool in the kitchen across from him.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded his head and took a drink from his iced tea.

“Do you love her?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” I answered without hesitation.

In the three years that I’d been dating Angela, he’d never once asked about the direction of the relationship or did I think she was the one.  Even when we became engaged, he said nothing beyond offering his congratulations.  He’d waited until this night, the night before the wedding to ask me about my impending marriage.

“Well, I wish I had some advice to give you, but my marriage didn’t work out so well.  But if you love her like you said you do, then that’s good enough for me.”

And that was it.  He didn’t expound on the nature or the meaning of love or even how it might be expressed between two people.  He didn’t even ask if she loved me.  He only wanted to know if I loved her.  Since I did, he gave me his blessing.

*********

On May 23rd, we’ll celebrate twenty years of marriage.  My Dad had it right.  Did I love her?  Yes.  Then I could find a way and the way that I found was to let go of the outcomes and let love be love because of love, not to act lovingly because I wanted something or because of what it might get me or how it might cause her to respond or to change.

*********

PS- Now kids, that’s a totally different story.  There are days where that feels like work, hard work.

An Oreo Cookie Led To Love

Sometimes, a question will stop you in your tracks.  The question will cause you to re-evaluate decisions and choices, perhaps even vows, that you’ve made.  These questions, occurring infrequently and at the most unexpected moments, can change your life.  But, you wouldn’t expect this question something along the lines of “Would you like an Oreo?”  Unless you happen to be a lover of Oreo Cookies.

I’d just entered the air-conditioned common areas of the Nix Hall dormitory at Hardin-Simmons University after playing tennis for two hours on a Saturday afternoon in August of 1989.  The room was dark and a group of guys and girls were watching “Midnight Run,” the adventure-comedy starring Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin.

The question didn’t stop me because of my hunger or because I’d missed dinner in the cafeteria.  I didn’t halt and re-evaluate any dietary changes to my life.  What stopped me wasn’t the Oreo, but the brown-eyed brunette girl who held out the cookie and had asked the question.

Prior to returning to college that fall, I’d sworn off girls for the time being.  Between work and school, I figured that I didn’t have time for girls.  Besides, the emotional ups and downs of a dating relationship had worn me out.  I figured there must be a better way but I didn’t the time or energy to figure it out so I decided to put off dating for the time being.   Now, less than two days after vowing not to date anyone, I was taking that Oreo cookie and squeezing my sweat-crusted and odorous body next to some unlucky person across the room from this brown-eyed beauty.

I must’ve eaten nearly a dozen Oreos that night.

She was beautiful.

*************

The next morning, a friend, Clif, invited me to church with him.  I walked into church and saw that same brown-eyed girl.  I may have said “Hi,” to her, but I can’t remember for sure.  Again, I made sure to sit where I could keep an eye on her.  I was trying to figure out if she had a boyfriend.  It didn’t appear so.

That vow was an afterthought that no longer entered my mind.

After church, Clif asked “Do you want to come back to church tonight?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

My motives were not of a spiritual nature.

That night, we arrived ten minutes late to church.  Everyone was standing so I couldn’t see if this brown-eyed girl had come to church.  I followed Clif and a few others as they looked for seats while I kept my eyes out for this girl.  I saw her and an empty seat next to her.

“Can I sit here?” I asked.

She nodded her head.

I ditched my friends.

When church ended, I finally spoke to her, asking her questions about her schedule, her major, which dorm she livedin, did she work, where did she work, and anything else I could think of to learn as much about her as possible.

“Are you doing anything tonight?  I think everyone might be going out to eat,” I said.  I had no idea if anyone was going out to eat, but there had to be a group going and I was going to invite us along.

“Sure,” she answered.

We walked over towards other students and a group of people decided to go to Taco Bell.

“Is anyone riding with you?” I asked as we walked outside.

“No,” she said.

“Well, how about I ride with you?”  I proposed.

She agreed and we talked the entire fifteen minute drive to the Taco Bell across the street from campus.  I stood in line behind her, continuing to talk to her, and then when we got our food, we sat across from one another and talked for another hour.  I don’t know who sat by us or what they were talking about.  To me, they didn’t exist.  I was enraptured with this girl.

After dinner, I retreated back to my dorm.  Clif and I sat in his room, talking and listening to music.

“So, have you picked out any girls that you might like to ask out?” Clif asked.

“Angela Magee.  She’s the one.”

***************

And yet it still took me until Thursday to work up the courage to ask her out.  Knowing her class and work schedule from our Sunday conversation, I went to the student center for lunch and dinner and hung out until I saw her approaching.  I’d try to sit at the same table as her and talk to her.

By Thursday, I’d finally worked up the courage to ask her out.  We were sitting at the same table at lunch.  My plan was to walk out at the same time as she did and then walk her to her dorm, asking her out along the way.  I looked at her plate and saw that she still had half a plate of food left.  I can go get seconds, I thought to myself.  I got up, got another plate of food, and returned to find that she’d left.

I took two bites and gave up.  I’d lost my appetite.  I got up, dropped off my plate, and walked over to get my backpack.  Most people dropped their backpacks inside the doors of the cafeteria.  As I was getting my backpack, Angela walked in.

“I grabbed somebody else’s gray backpack,” she said as she dropped that one back into the pile and looked for her backpack and then I walked out with her.  By the time, we’d exited the student center, I’d dismissed the fluttering butterflies in my stomach and asked Angela out on a date for that night.

“Yes,” she said.

************

In every other attempt at dating, I’d taken the girl out to a nice restaurant and to a movie, doing everything I could to impress her.  Since those efforts hadn’t worked out well for me in the long run, I decided to try something different.  More than wanting to impress this girl, I just wanted to get to know her.

I picked her up at 7 and we walked back to the student center.  Inside the student center was a place call the Sub, which was nothing more than a place for students to get soft drinks and hamburgers.  At night, it tended to be deserted.

We each got a Coke, sat at a table, and starting talking.  Not until the employees started stacking chairs and mopping the floors did I look down at my watch.  It was eleven.  Those four hours felt like ten minutes.  It was the best night ever.

On the way back, I asked her out on a date for the next night.  This time I splurged on dinner at Casa Herrera and again we talked and talked and talked.

**************

On this May 23rd, 2012, we celebrate 20 years of marriage and it all began with a question about an Oreo cookie, “Would you like an Oreo?”

Helping My Son Find His Way (Or How My Son Will Be the Next Michael Phelps (but probably not))

Samuel, my 7 year old son, is not me.  He might have the misfortune of looking like me, but he is his own person with his own unique interests.  That might be the one of the toughest parenting lesson to learn.

I played team sports at the YMCA growing up and loved it.  The practice, the games, the jerseys (which were nothing more than cotton t-shirts with a number on the back), and beating the other team.  Whatever the season, I played that sport- football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball in the spring.  At home, I would play those same sports- throwing a football at a tree in the backyard while pretending I was the quarterback, shooting hoops in the driveway, and practicing my pitching by throwing a tennis ball up against the house.

So when Samuel came along, since he looked like me, I figured that he would be like me.  And rather than waiting until the second grade to get him started in team sports, as my parents had done, we started him in kindergarden.

Start them early.

Soccer.  Practice once a week with a game on Saturday.

Did he want to work on his soccer skills in the backyard between practices and games?  Not so much.  Occasionally.  If it wasn’t too hot outside.  Or too windy.

I noticed that during the games, he tended to disengage, to not enter the scrum, but to hang around the fringes of the pack, rarely ever kicking the ball.

He needs motivation, I thought to myself, and I knew the trick.  Just before the start of the next to last game, I pulled him aside and offered a toy if he kicked the ball ten times.  I figured it might take him all game to accomplish this task as he hadn’t kicked the ball ten times all season in a game.

Yes, I resorted to bribery.

And it worked.

Samuel kicked the ball ten times in the first quarter.

I pulled him aside at the end of the quarter and upped the ante.  ”If you kick the ball thirty times the rest of the game, I’ll get you that really nice (i.e. expensive) toy that you’ve been wanting.”

Goal accomplished midway through the fourth quarter.

Before the game the following week, Samuel asked how many times he had to kick the ball to get that other toy he’d been wanting.

“Last week, you proved you could kick the ball.  Now go do it.”

He resorted to his normal post outside the pack.

We signed him up for spring soccer and towards the end of the season his interest began to wane.  When he played the following fall he completely lost interest halfway through the season.  He didn’t want to go to practice and he didn’t want to go to the games.  He couldn’t be cajoled into kicking the ball.  Still, we made him finish out the season.

We’d also tried basketball, but got the same results.  He stood on the perimeter and rarely got involved.

“So maybe team sports isn’t his thing?  Maybe he’s not a competitive person?” Angela proposed.

What?!  Not competitive?  How could that be?  He looked like me, so wasn’t he like me?

“He likes to swim, maybe we could get him on a swim team,” Angela suggested.  She googled swim teams for Arlington and found one for kids his age.  He would have to try out and if he made the team, he’d be going to practice twice a week.

We pulled up some videos up Michael Phelps on youtube and showed them to Samuel.  ”Would you like to try something like this?”

“Yeah!!!!!!!!”

We went to the try out.  He didn’t do so well.  His backstroke looked more like a wounded fish floundering on its side.  His freestyle was, well, pretty free and wild, lacking in any form whatsoever.  Stopping halfway down the lane to catch his breath didn’t help either.

His tryout took place at the same time an older group of boys were practicing.  They were in the lanes next to Samuel.  The coach told Samuel to once more do the freestyle as fast as he could.  He could start when he was ready.  One eye was on her and the other was on the older boys in the lane next to him.  Another coach was counting them down for their start.

“On your mark, get set, go!”

As they exploded in the water, Samuel pushed off at the same time as well, thrashing about.  I won’t lie you and say he was a born natural, easily beating boys four and five years older than him.  They dropped him in three strokes.

But we’d seen a competitive spark.

He wasn’t quite ready for the swim team.  He took swim lessons (saturday mornings at eight am, arghhhh!) for three months, learning the freestyle, the backstroke, the breaststroke, and the butterfly.  At the end of those three months, he tried out again for the team and this time he made it.

So now, twice a week, Samuel goes to swim practice for forty minutes, where they work him into the ground.  And he loves every minute of it.  There’s a smile plastered on his face the entire time (except for when he’s posing for pictures- then he puts on his game face). So he may not be the next Michael Phelps, but he’s found the thing he loves to do.

The Best Books I Read This Month (April 2012)

With all the time spent in hospital rooms, ICU rooms, and watching Mom, you’d think that I would’ve plowed through more books than normal, but I didn’t.  I have no reason why.  It even surprises me.

I started reading Nick Hornby when his first book, High Fidelity came out in ’95 or ’96.  This last month I returned to Hornby and read Juliet, Naked as well as How To Be Good.  Juliet, Naked reminded me a great deal of High Fidelity, which is still one of my favorite books, and I enjoyed this story of celebrity and relationships.

In addition to those two, here’s the rest of the list:

• Wild:  From Lost to Found on the Pacific Trail by Cheryl Strayed-  This book has garnered a lot of attention since its release.  The book is more than an account of Strayed’s adventures on the Pacific Trail, it’s also a journey of finding herself after the death of her mother from cancer.
• Building a Life Out of Words by Shawn Smucker
• Revelations:  Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation by Elaine Pagels- Pagels new book takes a historical rather than futurist approach to interpreting Revelation but she also comments on the similarities of Revelation to similar writings of that time period and the contrasting opinions of the book around the time of its writing.
• Reading Revelation Responsibly:  Uncivil Worship and Witness by Michael Gorman-  A more detailed historical approach to Revelation.  This one came highly recommended by Richard Beck from the Experimental Theology blog.
• Some Assembly Required:  A Journal of My Son’s First Son by Anne Lamott-  A great introspective look at life and relationships through this journal from Anne Lamott.
• Brave Dragons:  A Chinese Basketball Team, An American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing by Jim Yardley- A hilarious account of a former NBA coach who agrees to coach a professional Chinese team.  In the course of the year, he’s hired, demoted, promoted, demoted, and so on by his ever meddling owner.
• Freedom is Blogging in Your Underwear by Hugh MacLeod- A short treatise on finding your own way from the author of the gaping void website.  As insightful and funny as his previous two books.
• Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster

The Things I Learned From Cancer

Before cancer afflicted my Mom, I thought I knew about cancer.  My grandmother died from lung cancer when I was young, my mother-in-law survived breast cancer, and I’ve known other people at various stages of their own struggles with cancer.  But from the day of Mom’s diagnosis with Stage IV stomach cancer on March 16th until her passing on April 14th, I learned a lot that I didn’t know before.  I learned about cancer itself, about death, and even more about living.

I discovered that some doctors and nurses must’ve skipped those classes on compassion.  But I met others who not only could teach those classes on compassion but restored my faith and trust in the medical profession.  I learned that a caring doctor and nurse make the difference when you are helping a loved one with a terminal diagnosis.

One insensitive doctor, just days after Mom had been given weeks to live, ordered physical therapy for her while she was still in the hospital.  At the time, Mom was still in a state of mind to send the therapist on his way and later to give that doctor a piece of her mind.

I was reminded that food in the hospital cafeteria is still just as bad as I’d remembered.

I gained an appreciation and respect for the people who provide hospice care.  They deal with the specter of death in a compassionate and caring way.  The nurses and care managers I dealt with remained even-keeled in the face of chaos, always taking the time to explain what was happening and what to expect in the coming days.  They took care of Mom’s physical being and our emotional being.

I learned the value of family and good friends.  Our heavy load was lightened by the presence of those who came to visit Mom, who allowed us to take a break, who asked how we were doing, brought us meals, sent cards, texts, and emails, and who offered to help us however they might.  Best of all, they were willing to listen.  Or to sit and be silent with us.  And those who’d been down this same road offered lessons from their own experiences.

As we approached the last few days with Mom, people kept asking, “Has everyone gotten to say their goodbyes?”  I understood the question, but I didn’t understand the question.  Why did people who didn’t know me think it necessary for me to have one last conversation, to make peace after all these years?

This wasn’t the way I’d been brought up to live.  Do whatever you please, offend any and all, and then make sure you have a chance to make peace with everyone before you die.  How are you going to live if you don’t have a chance to make your peace, to offer your apologies, to express your appreciation and love before the person dies?

Mom lived with a short memory and tried to make peace, as much as it depended on her, with people as she went along.  So as we entered our final weeks and days, there was no need to make peace, no need to say our final goodbyes, no need to express appreciation and admiration.  Instead, we laughed and we cried over our shared lives together.  She told me stories that I’d never heard before- like that I’d been born six weeks early with the cord wrapped around my neck- and she reminded me of things that I’d long forgotten- such as her getting mad at me on our trip to the Grand Canyon and making me get out of the car on the highway (she did come back and get me).

My Dad passed away in his sleep in May 2011.  There was no opportunity for one last conversation, but I felt no guilt nor any loss in not having had that chance.  All that needed to be said had already been said.

From my parents, I learned this and Mom’s terminal cancer cemented this lesson in me:  Live your life in such a way that there is no need for last words.  Let your words and your actions be such that there is no need for one last conversation.  Regrets in life and death will eat you up from the inside out.

From the death of two parents in the last year, I learned more about living:  Let there be no need for last words.

A Eulogy For Mom

This was the eulogy I gave on Mom’s funeral on 4/20/12.

This is life.  We are born and we die and there is all that is in between.  Some days our time in between can be compared to walking in the fields, surrounded by blooming flowers and green grass.  At other times, the in between can be likened to climbing a mountain and reaching the peak, looking out from that high place on the rivers below and other snow-capped mountains.  But at some point, somewhere along the in between, we walk down the mountain into the valley through thistles and thorns.

A few weeks ago, Mom and I were sitting in her hospital room and she asked, “Are you going to have a service?”

“For what?” I asked, not knowing what she was talking about.  We’d been talking about her dogs.  Was she wanting me to have some sort of service for her dogs?

“A memorial service.  For me,” she said.

“Of course,” I answered.

Then, in her typical fashion, never being the type of person to leave the details to someone else, she told me exactly how she wanted the service to be.  She gave me a list of songs to choose from, told me the service had to be, had to be, celebratory, and not sad in any way.  Then she declared that she wanted only one passage of Scripture to be read, Psalm 23.  “Make sure,” she told me, “that you highlight that one verse, ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I know you are with me.  Your rod and Your staff comfort me.’  She said this verse in particular had helped her and comforted her on many occasions.  When she found herself in that stage of life, going through the valley surrounded thistles and thorns, the presence of God comforted her and gave her the strength to keep going.

When she finished giving me these directions, I asked, half-teasing, if she wanted to write down what she wanted me to say.

“Nah,” she said, waving her hand at me, “You can take of that.”

The day after she was diagnosed with stomach cancer I preached at CrossRoads and I spoke from the Gospel of Mark.  The stories I was speaking on dealt with a couple of occasions where Jesus healed some individuals and in my notes I’d written down something along the lines of “even though God doesn’t heal everyone, the one thing we do see is that He is near and present even in the midst of our pain.”  I wrote those words before I’d even learned of her illness.  When I preached that sermon later that weekend, when I came to that point in my notes, with Mom sitting in there just having learned of her illness, I could not look in her direction and I had a bit of trouble keeping my composure.

After the service, she came up to me, hugged me, and whispered in my ear, “You’re such a crybaby.”

“That’s ok,” I whispered back, “I’ll get even later when I tell all those stories about you at your memorial and you won’t be able to do anything about it.”

Then she tried to be all motherly by saying, “I love all of your stories.”

A bit about her life.  Although she was born in Chicago, my mom grew up in San Antonio along with her two sisters, Janice and Pat, and her brother, John.  She possessed a bit of vagabond spirit as she lived in San Antonio, Seguin, Austin, Dripping Springs, St. Louis, Phoenix, Plano, McKinney, and then Arlington.  And maybe one or two other places along the way.

She was married and divorced two times and raised three boys, myself, Jason, and Rob.

She had one grandchild, Samuel.  She often reminded me that she only had one grandchild.  My response to her was, “Well, you do have two other sons.”

Besides, the way she spoiled Samuel with toys, cookies, candy, pizza, stops at McDonalds and Taco Bell along with trips to the movies and the arcade and Target, I’m not sure she could’ve afforded a second grandchild.  Not that lack of money ever stopped her from doing anything.

During these last few weeks, believing that she was going to heaven to meet God, she finally came clean on her grandmotherly ways.  “I never followed your instructions about Samuel,” she said, “I gave him all the cookies, ice cream, and soda he wanted.”

“Yeah,” I told her, “I figured as much.”

We had that sort of relationship where we could tease and joke with one another.

She told me there were two reasons she moved to Arlington:  to be near family in case something happened and to be closer to Samuel.  She loved her job at the Forum, partly for the job, and partly because she was off on Fridays.  Every Friday during the summer she and Samuel were traipsing over Arlington doing something.

There are certain things about her that I will remember, images of her that will always stick in my mind.

To begin with, Mom loved to talk.  This is probably no surprise to many of you who knew her, but she really loved to talk.

A few years ago, a relative of my Dad’s passed away and Mom rode with me to the funeral in San Antonio.  There was an accident in Georgetown that shut the highway down in both directions, which turned our four hour trip into a seven hour trip.  She talked the entire seven hours.

On the way back from San Antonio, I got in the car, started the engine, and turned on the radio before she got in the car.  She was still talking to somebody else.  I hurriedly tried to find some sort of talk radio program so that she might think I was interested in that program.  The only thing I could find was some show about gardening and landscaping.  I could care less about listening to a radio show on gardening, but I hoped that it might give me a reprieve for a bit.  Thirty minutes into our drive, she reached over, turned off the radio, and said, “Enough of that, I want to talk.”

While she was in the hospital recently, Gene-o stopped by around lunchtime to visit with her.  I took the opportunity to go get some lunch and came back an hour later.  When we returned, Mom said, “We’ve been talking about our childhoods.”  Gene-o later told me he’d gotten in the first three sentences and Mom had commandeered the conversation after that.

One of the ICU nurses attempted to give her grief for talking so much, to which Mom replied, “I’m going out talking.”

She loved being around people.  She wanted to laugh, smile, and enjoy life.  Wherever she lived, wherever she worked, it didn’t take her very long to develop a circle of friends.  To her, it didn’t matter if you were a high-level executive at an insurance company or a checker at Albertson’s, she treated everyone the same.  Good or bad.  She would help anyone , but she would also give anyone a piece of her mind.  To her, people were people and the extent of your education or the size of your bank account didn’t make you any better or any worse than anyone else.

I consider it a testament to her as a friend that her friends repeatedly visited her in the last month.  If they couldn’t make it, then they were calling and emailing to check on her.  When I wrote these words, I was going to say that if one of them had been in the same situation, then she likely would’ve gone to visit them.  In the last week, I’ve learned from numerous people that she was there for them.  She drove one person to her chemo treatments.  Another she stopped by to check on every day.  And another told me that Mom called each and every day when they were sick.

Of course, she also loved her dogs.  Emphasis on the plural.  One was never enough.  And to set the record straight, I know she’s been telling everyone that when I was growing up one of the three dogs was mine, but they were all hers.

If it came to choosing between her sons and her dogs as to who was right and wrong, the dogs often won.  If one of them ate my brand new basketball shoes, then it wasn’t the dog’s fault, it my fault for not barricading my door so the dog couldn’t get in my room.  If the dogs jumped the fence in the middle of winter, it wasn’t the dog’s fault that it got out, it was ours and we needed to go find those dogs and bring them home so they wouldn’t freeze to death.

She was also a strong, tough woman.

She needed to be strong and tough in order to raise three boys as a single mom.  Especially the three boys she was given.  It might’ve been easier on her with another set of three, but she had us and we were no walk in the park.

When the phone rang after school, we knew that we’d better be home and we’d better answer the phone or else.  Later, we knew to be home before it got dark or else.  There were many times when I found myself sprinting down the street trying to get home before the sun went down.

When we got out of line, she was the enforcer.  She wasn’t afraid to use a belt, but for a very brief period of time, she tried to be progressive and she attempted alternative methods of punishment.  I remember having to sit at at the table and write 500 times, “I will not punch my brother in the face.”  When that didn’t work, she resorted to sending us to bed, even if it was five in the afternoon.  After a few weeks of these new methods of punishment, she went back to the old way, the way that worked, the way of the belt.  And she was wise to my attempts to pad my backside with baseball cards.

I can remember her saying, “You don’t have to fear your father and you don’t have to fear God, but you sure as heck better fear me.”  Oh, we did.  We definitely did.

Her situation as a single mother of three demanded that she exude toughness and strength, but I know that she loved us and was trying to do the best she could.  That often meant working two or three jobs to provide for us.  Three growing boys weren’t cheap.  That meant continuing to work multiple jobs so that she could help pay for college.

And when we were out of college, she continued working at least two jobs.  I think she did so for two reasons:  One, she liked being around people, and two, the extra money allowed her to be generous to other people.  She wanted to give to other people.  This last Christmas, she received an unexpected christmas bonus and instead of using it on herself as I tried to get her to do, or even to save some of it, she spent it on Christmas presents for her family and friends.  That was my mom.

Growing up, we didn’t have much, but when opportunities presented themselves, she made sure that we engaged in new experiences.  Prior to us moving from Phoenix, Mom thought it would be a great idea for us to see the Grand Canyon.  One Saturday morning, we piled into Mom’s single cab Datsun pickup truck and drove the four or so hours to the Grand Canyon.  When we arrived, we ate at McDonald’s, and then we spent at least, at least, ten minutes peering over the guard railing looking at the Grand Canyon.  Then we piled back into the truck and drove home.

But that was only part of the trip.  Jason and I got into an argument on the drive back and after multiple warnings, Mom pulled the truck over to the side of the road, told us to get out and walk home.  Once we proceeded to exit the car, she stayed true to her word and drove off.  She stopped a quarter of a mile down the road and let us back in the truck, only after she’d asked if we’d learned our lesson.  We had.

A few miles later, we pulled to the side of the road again, this time having run out of gas.  Not a one of us was stupid enough to say a single word to her about that.

Later in life, when I would watch her with Samuel, when I would see him come home with a Target bag wrapped around his arm containing yet another toy, a soda in one hand, and chocolate smeared across his face, I would ask myself, “Who is this pushover?”

Besides being a talker and a friend, a lover of dogs, and a tough woman and mother doing the best she could, she was also a survivor.  She endured enough hard times and difficult periods that would’ve knocked other people down.  But she got up and kept going.

If I’d had to deliver this eulogy thirty years ago, my words would’ve been different.  At that time, I’d gone to live with my Dad and the parting with Mom was not the best.  Over the next few years, I saw and talked to her sporadically.  The relationship was strained and distant, but we were polite and cordial to one another.

About fifteen years or so ago, she moved from Austin to Plano because of a company relocation.  She needed the work, Rob was about to enter college, so she moved, surviving once again.  At the time, I was working in Dallas and we started meeting for lunch and dinner, just the two of us, something I never expected would ever happen.  Sometimes, we talked about the past, and sometimes we talked about the present, like when she pressured me about grandchildren.  The conversations were easy at times and hard at others, but we took the opportunity to listen to one another, something I’d never done.  As we met and talked, I encountered a different woman than the one I’d grown up with.

Part of the renewal of the relationship can be credited to time and maturity, but Mom gave all the credit to her renewed faith and commitment to Jesus Christ.  We didn’t grow up going to church, but after we went our separate ways nearly thirty years ago, I started going to church in San Antonio and she started going to church in Austin.

When asked about what made the difference in her life, how had she changed, Mom would say, “It was God.  His grace and His love.  God has given me a second chance at life.”

Here is what I have learned and hear me out to understand what I am saying.  Growing up, we had our differences and disagreements and the relationship became fractured for a period of time.

But in the intervening years, God not only changed her, but me as well.

It took me awhile but I learned that she was the mother I needed.  She was the mother I needed and I wouldn’t be here or be the person I am or accomplishing what I am or doing what I am or be the husband and father and brother I am without my mother being who she was, without her being the mother I needed rather than the mother I wanted.  I needed a strong mother doing the best she could, relying on God for the rest.

We’re born and we die and there is all that happens in between.  In her 61 years, my mom experienced a lot of the in between.  Along the way, she trusted in God to carry her through the ups and downs of life.

Our lives have been richer for her presence.  Every night for the past few weeks, I told her the same thing when I left.  “You will be missed, but you will not be forgotten.”