Unexpected Grace: Conclusion

An 'Unexpected' Note from Mom (Thanks, Mom! Now I'm beaming...!):

After six weeks with Ronda's live-in loving care, l am missing her.  We had fun together; long talks, movies, lovely candle lit dinners, an excursion to the beauty salon, doctor visits, work on the calendars and notecards, time spent learning about property management and extensive help with my critique group's reorganization.  She brought such energy, cheerfulness and expertness to each task.  And she taught me to be kinder, softer and gentler with the people we work with.  How proud I am of her and grateful too for this wonderful gift of my daughter.

Thank you, Ronda.  And thank you Jim and Courtney for your help in taking over the household tasks and seeing to the care of Evie while Ronda was helping me.

Love, Lynne

Unexpected Grace: Part VII

As the days progressed I found myself settling in and enjoying the rhythms of each day.  Some days I was able to attend morning Mass at St. Francis or get in a two mile walk around Lake Lynn.   Mom's spirits were high as she followed the doctor's orders and helped her healing along.  

By the end of November I was beginning to feel much more comfortable at the significantly expanded Community of St. Francis as well. Though I didn't know many people and had only seen one former neighbor or two, I had enjoyed attending several daily Masses, a "Come and See" with the Secular Franciscans, and a day-long retreat with one of the friars.

I had celebrated the Holy Day of the Feast of All Saints on November 1-- attended by the Franciscan school children dressed as miniature Mother Teresa's and Pope Francis's and various holy people of old.  Then on Thanksgiving Day I had the wondrous surprise of sitting in church right behind my middle school best friend Maureen Clark and seeing her husband, her children, and much of their extended family as well.

We joyfully celebrated Thanksgiving dinner at Mom's house that afternoon with Jim and the kids, Jim's mother Barb, and our little Evie who was in dog heaven with all of the goings on. 

So, it was with mixed feelings that my time staying with my Mom came to a close.  On our last Sunday together we drove to Greensboro for a special brunch and afternoon with our cousins who have become dear friends through the years. 

Then on my last morning with Mom, I decided to attend Mass at St. Francis one more time.  It was December 8th, the Holy Day of Mary's Immaculate Conception, and the liturgy was filled with such joy!  As the music, the preaching, the baptism, and the praise came to a close, I was suddenly filled with the idea of having my father commemorated here.  

So I went to the church office and asked to have my dad's name added to the Memorial Wall.  

The Memorial Wall, also in the Garden, provides room for over 600 memorial plaques.  Memorial plaques are names inscribed in memory of deceased parishioners who are buried elsewhere, or in memory of our parishioners’ deceased family members.  As Catholics, we believe that Baptism is our birth into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; the Eucharist is our meal for life’s journey. Our Memorial Garden reminds us of this mystery. As we pass through the Garden each Sunday on our way to Mass, we come through death to life, through the Garden to the waters of Baptism and the table of the Eucharist. We are travelers passing through, incorporated into the body of Christ, one day to be united with him and with those we love who have gone before us.

For more information about the Memorial Garden and Columbarium, or to purchase a niche or plaque, please contact Tresa Pickup, 847-8205 x 249.

So you see, while I was busy taking care of Mom after her fall in the yard, God was busy taking care of me-- and of Mom too-- through the many outpourings of help and of love from so many in our community.

Thinking back to that conversation in October with the woman at church who asked me if I had faith, and then to the amazing conclusion of my time with my mom which culminated in adding Dad's name to the Memorial Garden at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, I answer once again that, yes, I have faith! And gratitude! And joy! And such great hope in the days to come.

May the Joy of Christ be yours this Christmas and always.

The Priestly Blessing 

(Numbers 6:22-27)

The Lord said to Moses:

Speak to Aaron and his sons and tell them: 

This is how you shall bless the Israelites.  

Say to them:

The Lord bless you and keep you!

The Lord let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!

The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace!

So shall they invoke my name upon the Israelites, and I will bless them.

Unexpected Grace: Part VI

While all of this nursing was being done, my husband and daughter were holding down the fort at home.  There were meals to be made and a growing puppy to be cared for, and of course all of the things of everyday living.  

One desire of mine I discovered was nonnegotiable:  I wanted to attend a "puppy reunion" at the breeder's farm one Saturday not long after I found myself staying at Mom's.  Since my brother was coming to stay with my mom for the weekend, I told my husband that I would REALLY like to go to the farm as we had planned.

We tied a blue scarf around Evie's neck and drove north for an hour or two before we found ourselves at our breeder Julie Cook's home.  If you've never found yourself in a sea of golden retrievers, let me just say that the place was aptly named "Tranquility Farm!"  We were so happy to meet Carrie, the girl who owned Evie's father and helped to raise the litter.  The other dog owners from many different pairings from Golden Rose Kennel were just as relaxed and nice to be with as our favorite breed.  

Many thanks to my husband Jim for packing us up and helping to make that special day for us happen!!

Unexpected Grace: Part V

It's not EVERY day that you get to move back into your childhood home, and there are many pleasures associated with it.  First of all, you appreciate many things that you took for granted when you were small, like your very own mother for instance!   

After staying with her in the house for a week, I admired how nicely she had appointed our family's home, and how carefully she had maintained it.  She had expanded the kitchen and enlarged the deck, smoothed the popcorn ceilings and refurbished the bathrooms. And the neighborhood lake at the bottom of our sloping backyard was full of interest for me, not so much to swim in now, but rather as a nature preserve and a thing of natural beauty.  On mornings when I rose early enough, I hurried to the kitchen to try to catch the sun as it rose.  One time I made it out to the deck in the morning dawn when five deer came into focus as they grazed and played.  

On days when I went to the grocery store with a list from Mom, I marveled at how we bought many of the same foods. One thing she splurges on which I'd like to too is fresh flowers which she arranges and places in her kitchen.  As the days passed and we talked more and more,  I realized how much we had in common and how we looked at many things in much the same way.  

Movies, for instance.  To pass time in the evenings we decided to watch a Netflix movie on TV.  "How about Raising Ned Divine?" she suggested.  Indeed the story of a dead man in Ireland winning the lottery--and his friends doing all that they could to cash in-- is one of my own favorites too.  Taste like ours in movies is probably an inherited trait. :)

As mom slowly recuperated, we found our days largely filled with the business of living: making and enjoying our daily meals, talking and sharing the things in our lives, making executive decisions in tandem as we discussed the issues and concerns affecting us and the people whom we love, and greeting the thoughtful friends who came by for visits and to wish her well in her recovery.

I am truly humbled at the kindnesses offered by so many to Mom and to me as we waited for her knee to heal.  Friends came over bearing bowls of homemade soup, bouquets of flowers, get well cards, and even the daily newspaper.  One neighbor offered to witness and sign mom's absentee vote and take it to the post office before election day!  

Now that is above and beyond.

When my sister and her husband offered to fly in for a week to stay with mom and give me a rest, we happily agreed. While with mom they not only cooked and cleaned, but also bought all kinds of things to make home health care easier for us both.  They put rails on the toilet, a portable potty by the bed, a bench in the bathtub, arm pillows on the crutches, and tennis balls on the walker.  When I returned to duty after they went home, I found that mom could take care of most of her daily bathing and sanitary needs with the help of the new devices.  

Home health care is a growing need in our country and there are so many wonderful products on the shelves to make it easier!  I am most grateful of all for the portable potty liners which make emptying the potty a pretty painless process...

I may even buy some for my camper! (Which I took to the beach with Evie while my sister was here!)

Unexpected Grace: Part IV

Looking around the room we were gathered in, I realized I was standing in my family's former church building.  It was here in 1988 that we had said goodbye to Dad at his funeral in September before burying him in a veteran's cemetery called Raleigh National Cemetery downtown.  

Walking over to look more closely at the Founder's Wall, I saw my parents' names "Ronald and Lynne Troy" listed among their friends and fellow parishioners who had help to establish the church in 1983.   

Thinking back to those days, I remembered returning just two months later with family and friends to celebrate my Thanksgiving weekend wedding with Jim.  We had met in New York City and decided to marry and live in Raleigh, NC.  We married at 11 O'clock on a Saturday morning as the sun came streaming in through the glass wall behind the altar on that unseasonably warm November day.  

Just two days later we were off for our honeymoon to Mexico,  when a tornado came screaming through town, through our new apartment, through our car's windshield, and through many other homes and places where all had seemed normal just hours before.  The disaster was big enough to warrant a paragraph in the Acapulco Times which was promptly handed to us by our new friends at the hotel pool.

Twenty eight years have passed since then, and St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church has grown and expanded so much that this sacred place for many families has become just another multipurpose room with many new and larger buildings to replace it.  

When I looked around me in that repurposed room, I felt the memories of those former days press upon me.   

Unexpected Grace: Part III

"I never really had faith" my mother's friend said to me at a memorial service for a dear neighbor the week before.   

The woman who was speaking was in her late seventies, a founding member of the church in which we now gathered.  She had been a light for me when she wished me "God Speed" as I headed off to college thirty five years before. 

How could it be that a pillar of our community in Northwestern Raleigh--who petitioned the Catholic Church's bishop to build his new church in our backyards--had only found Jesus years after raising her family and sending them off to live lives of their own.  How could it be that she had found God not in the community in which she worshiped, but in the ecumenical bible study held down the street?

"Do YOU have faith?" she asked me as she turned to me with interest.

"Yes, I have faith!" I answered with a force born out of conviction. In my mind I recalled how my father's Melanoma diagnosis and early death five years later had compelled me to seek answers to the most important questions in life when I was only nineteen and a sophomore in college.  

What is the point of loving someone so much that losing them would mean my own near demise? I was the apple of my father's eye and he was all that I strived to be.  Losing him shook my sense of safety in the world, my confidence in a God who cares about what happens to us, and my faith in being able to provide for my own children should I be given them one day.   How can a good and loving God allow us to die one by one when we need each other so much to survive and to thrive?  Why would God give us the ability to love one another even beyond the bonds of life if He did not also plan to reunite us one day?

After years of experiencing a searing grief as I searched for what had become of my father, I had an intense experience of the God who made us and loves us and brings us home.  At a simple request for healing from the grief of losing my dad, I had a sudden infilling of the Holy Spirit, my head became hot, my hands shook, and tears streamed down my face as two fellow Catholics and I held hands and prayed for my Baptism in the Holy Spirit. (There is a stained glass window in St. Peter's Basilica that depicts this pretty well:)

With a sudden and powerful physical manifestation of God, I suddenly KNEW, without any doubt at all, that God is Real.  He Lives.  And He Cares. And He wants to bring us home. 

When that realization was mine, I became flooded with Joy.  I suddenly had Hope in the resurrection of Christ and true relief in knowing that the death of my father was not the final word.   And immediately I was healed of the agonizing grief that had been with me since the illness and death of my dad.     

Yes, it was true, I had the gift of faith.

Unexpected Grace: Part II

In the ER they xrayed, wrapped, and braced my mother's leg and asked us to make an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon for the following week.

Mom's diagnosis:  A fracture in her leg, just below the knee.   

The course of action:  No surgery required IF she could avoid putting weight on her foot for the next six to eight weeks. 

And so we began...!

Unexpected Grace: Part I

It really is true that life can change in an instant.  

In late October my mother was clipping flowers in her yard, when she stepped backward and suddenly felt her left foot go down, down, down, into a deep and narrow hole hidden beneath the autumn leaves.   Her body twisted as she fell and snapped her leg.

My phone rang a little while later and I texted my sister as our mom told us what had happened. 

"Get her to the emergency room, pronto!" was my younger sister's medical advice from several states away.   Trained as a Registered Nurse, my sister is always at the ready to help us deal with various and sundry family emergencies. 

"I don't like the sounds of this, so I am heading over to Mom's now!" said my brother when I texted him at his office in Research Triangle Park.   

"Courtney, can you watch the puppy while I get dressed and head over to Mom's?" I called out to my recent college graduate who is applying to schools with doctorates in Medieval Literature.

We adopted our golden retriever pup Evie just three months ago.   After the loss of our beloved Standard Poodle/Doodle dogs during the past year, she has brought much needed sunshine and beauty, snuggliness and awe into our lives.  

Here she is, in a photo taken just two days before I received my mother's call: