You probably didn’t know Mary. You certainly didn’t know the Mary that I knew or the unique vision each of my sons has of a lost mother.
I met this Mary. Cool, fun, loving Aunt Mary. She had five nieces and they worshiped her. I didn’t question why she didn’t have her own children, I knew that to simply be near this big, caring family was enough for the moment. I don’t know how, but we talked easily about how many children we would like to have in the future. That was our second date.
God made Mary to be a mother and he gave me the opportunity to fulfill my dream of being a father with her.
These beautiful boys are now seven- and nine-years-old. I didn’t always know why we took so many pictures. I’m intensely experiential, I want all my senses turned toward the world, taking in all the stimuli, gorging on the moment. The camera seemed in the way, “How could we forget this?” “The picture won’t do this instant justice,” or “Can I get some of those smooches?”
The fact is that we adventured too often to remember them all. Young minds are not designed to capture and transfer events into long-term memory (I’m convinced this is to protect them from all their parents’ screw ups). It seems now that we lived as if we knew we only had 13 years together. From picture taking, saying “Yes” to everything, home educating, and becoming Christian to cursory end-of-life planning and discussion, I believe God was guiding us into this storm. He’s here with us now and guiding us out.
One of our last escapades had all the ingredients. We trekked to Hagley Museum and Library and had the snow-blanketed grounds to ourselves. The boys were total rascals, but we spotted ducks, a red tail hawk, and frozen ginkgo fruit.
These connections to the times before the storm carry us forward. All the beauty of the world is there to discover and rediscover.
Mary is fully in Heaven with Jesus, but I am darn glad that she left so much love behind. The enormity of what she created in her 47 years on Earth is hard to comprehend. The pictures buttress the memories, preserve and enhance them. They give us a foundation of living love to stand on and heal from what we have lost.
God bless,
Jason
