In Memoriam

I want to tell you a little story.

Once upon a time, I was a very small sort of person, and I had two very best friends: Sarah and Shelby. I actually don’t have any memories pre-SS. We were inseparable. Sarah and I were inseparable.

These two girls had two great-grandparents, named Nolan and  Ilene or, more affectionately, Papa and Momo. The three of us spent lots of time with them. Even after I didn’t anymore, I knew of how much time the girls spent with them from talks after church with Papa and Momo.

You see, life took some nasty turns and left Sarah, Shelby, and I in very different places. At Woodlake, every single week before I’d leave, I’d find Nolan and Ilene to hug them, tell them I loved them, and ask about the girls. Every week, Ilene would respond the same way by taking my hands in hers, looking at me with her deep, blue eyes, and telling me to pray for “our girls.” It undid me every time.

The beautiful thing was, though, that no matter what was going on in Sarah and Shelby’s lives, no matter how hard and hurt they were, they were still sweet and soft with their great-grandparents. They inspire gentleness.

They were also the kind of couple who still held hands to walk to the car together. It’s a little thing, but it’s a big thing. After more than fifty years of marriage, they still held hands to walk to the car.

When I left Woodlake and when I moved to Arkansas, I worried constantly that due to my desertion of my church and my estrangement from my friends, I wouldn’t ever know if Nolan and Ilene had died.

This past Christmas break, I felt it all through me that I needed to find them and visit. I made some calls, found the nursing home they’d been moved to, and didn’t go for days. I couldn’t do it. At the very last day possible (honestly, I think it could have even been the day I went back; I don’t remember), I went. I think I spent the whole time crying. My heart burned with every sort of emotion. Missing my friends, wanting them to come back to Jesus, seeing Nolan and Ilene reduced to nursing home state, everything.

Nolan was pleased as punch that I’d come, and he remembered me. Ilene was so near death that she couldn’t speak or move. We just looked at one another, and I held her hand and told her how much I loved her. She died a month later. My ma saw it in the paper.

Her funeral was a most redemptive experience. Jesus has done incredible work in Sarah and Shelby and, for a few moments, it was as if nothing had changed between us at all.

This summer, I felt the same sort of pull to go back and see Nolan. Again, I couldn’t make myself go. The day before I left for Ireland, I finally did it.

It was downright fun. When I came in, he was struggling to get energy enough for shoes, so  I sat on the ground, took up his feet, and slid them into socks and shoes. After, he tapped his feet like a jig and started “yippie-kay-ay”ing. Ready to run the Boston Marathon, I’d say.

We looked up at the picture of him and Ilene on his wall, the one that looks so much like Sarah, and he told me how they’d skipped church right after they got married to have that photo taken. He told me how much he missed his sweetheart.

We talked about a lot of things and laughed together and I could not get over how totally sharp his mind was. As a former counselor/professor, he was thrilled I was headed in the same direction. “But of course that makes sense! You’re one of my girls. You got it from me.”

When I kissed his cheek on my way out, I told him he better wait for me to come back. He said he had no intention of waiting that long for his heavenly reunion.

Just before I woke up this morning, I had a dream that I was in my mama’s bed, and she came in to tell me Nolan had died. I woke up instantly and checked my phone. I had a FaceBook message from Sarah. Nolan hit his head yesterday and went to go be with his sweetheart and his sweet Lord.

God is so good. He orchestrates the patterns of life so perfectly and with so much grace. I was able to say goodbye to both my adoptive grandparents before they left and have closure and redemption with Sarah and Shelby.

But, more and better, Nolan and Ilene lived to see their great-granddaughters come back to Jesus. That, is the very best.