Wednesday, June 13, 2012

A Tribute to Aunt Lynn

Dear Aunt Lynn,

I thought I'd write you a letter to tell you just how special you are to me since I'm not able to be there for your memorial.  These are things we don't tell each other when we're alive - I guess it makes us uncomfortable.  Maybe we would tell each other these things if we knew that it would be the last time we'd have the chance.  

The last time I saw you was in November when I was home for Pop's memorial.  I was still in my first trimester of pregnancy with my sweet baby girl, Jane Alice, born just two days before you went home to be with Jesus.  Not far along enough to know the sex of the baby - except YOU already knew it was a girl and had been telling everyone that it was, in fact, a girl!

Scott and I got a kick out of your certainty and I whispered silent prayers that you were right.  Don't tell anyone I told you that, but I really did want a girl, and I believed that you have always had a special relationship with Our Father and just might have known something the rest of us couldn't know.

We couldn't know because our hearts and minds aren't where they should be.  Perhaps if we lived more like you - generous with our gifts, loving toward others, quick to laugh - we might hear the voice of God more clearly.  Or maybe it was just because you were chosen to have a special relationship with Him.  He gave you faith like a child while you were here on earth. The kind of faith I find so hard to achieve.

I've been thinking a lot about you these past two weeks and childhood memories of our time together bring a smile to my face or tear to my eye - depending on the moment.  

Just you, me, Joni & Codie piling in your bed with a dog or two for sleepovers, eating Vienna sausages out of the can, fishing in the pond with earthworms YOU dug up (Lord knows I wasn't going to dig 'em up!), being tickled to the point of tears, picking out Christmas gifts from the Sears catalog and trying to cross stitch as well as you - just to name a few.

You were a constant in my life.  There was never any doubt that you would be there.  Always happy to see me.  Always with a story to tell.  Always ready to laugh at a story I told.  Always with a cross stitching (or two!) in progress.

I cherish all the cross stitchings you made when I was a baby and those that you've made for my babies.  There are some that deck the walls of Foster's room and others that swaddle the bottom of Jane Alice.  They may not remember you the way I will, but they are covered in your love.

Until we meet again,

Aron

Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return.  The LORD gave, the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.  Job 1:21