Carry the Light (22 page)

Ellie's throat constricted.

“You also specified that should your heart stop beating, you do not want us to engage in any measures to resuscitate you, to start your heart again. We call that DNR—Do Not Resuscitate. Do you agree that's what you want us to do?” she asked gently.

“Yes, I do,” her mother said, without a heartbeat of hesitation in her voice. “I do,” she repeated firmly.

As the social worker left the room, her mother looked Ellie directly in the eye. “Don't worry about all that,” she said. “We both know that it's time for me to make those kinds of decisions. But I also know it's time for us to talk…because…because while I know I haven't been the mother you've deserved, I want you to know that you have always been the daughter I so deeply wanted to have.”

E
llie clutched her mother's hand like a lifeline that held her fast, while her heart pounded hard and steady and her mind echoed with the long-awaited words her mother had spoken. This was the new beginning in their relationship that Ellie had prayed for. It was the dream that she had kept alive with faith and hope, the balm that soothed the bitter hurts and crushing disappointments of the past.

And Ellie knew that, in this same moment, another prayer had been answered—her mother had been given the strength to face her impending death without fear. It was a miracle of transformation in the troubled relationship of a mother and daughter, and a gift of grace for a woman facing the transition from one life to another.

“I'm not sure what to say, except that I love you,” Ellie whispered, glancing down at her mother and gently squeezing her hand.

Head bowed, her mother laced her fingers with Ellie's and sighed. “After you left the hospital yesterday, Reverend Fisher came to see me. I'm afraid we talked clear through till evening. I hope his wife isn't put out with me, even though he did call to tell her not to hold supper for him.”

“I'm sure she understands there are times when he's needed and he can't avoid being late. She's been a pastor's wife for a long, long time,” Ellie reassured her mother.

“And I've been a Christian for a long, long time, but that doesn't mean I've always acted like one and lived like one,” her mother confessed and shook her head. “Dying is scary business, Ellie.”

Ellie swallowed the lump in her throat and struggled to find words of comfort, but everything she thought to say sounded hollow. Instead, she asked, “What scares you most?”

“It's not the dying itself,” her mother replied. “And I'm not afraid of what happens after I die, because I believe in God's promise that anyone who believes in Him will enter His kingdom. But I am afraid of dying without…without ever having the chance to tell you that I'm sorry,” she whispered, before looking up at Ellie. “I'm…sorry. So very sorry…for everything. I don't expect you'll ever be able to forgive me completely for not being the kind of mother I should have been, but…but I'd be able to die in peace if I thought you might one day come to understand why I've always been so negative and so critical of everything, and forgive me. Just a little.”

Overwhelmed by her mother's apology and her request, Ellie let the tears roll down her cheeks, wondering why it had taken so long for the two of them to set aside their differences and simply love each other.

Since Ellie had never had a daughter, her only knowledge about the nature of the mother/daughter relationship was the experience she had had with her mother. After raising two sons, however, she did know that she had never felt any need to compete with them or to compare herself to them, the way she had done her whole life with her mother. Whether that was typical for mothers and daughters did not matter. Not now that Ellie had realized that her mother was not solely responsible for the difficult relationship they had always shared. Ellie bore responsibility, too, and it weighed heavily on her heart.

“I—I never made it easy for you,” she admitted.

Her mother sighed again and rested her head against Ellie's arm. “If you hadn't been so strong, you would have ended up bitter and resentful like me. I was so blinded by my own misery, I made you miserable, too. But you were so smart and so strong, you succeeded, in spite of me.”

“At what price?” Ellie whispered as her mother's words stripped away the pretense of her own motives to succeed as a wife and mother, but most of all as a professional educator, then as department head and ultimately, perhaps, as a supervisor. She had been driven to succeed, not to please herself, but to prove she could go far and beyond the limited world she thought her mother had created for herself as a homemaker.

Ellie swallowed hard. “I was foolish, too,” she admitted. “I was so busy trying to prove I could be a better wife or a better mother or that I could have a career, as well as a family, that I forgot to love, respect and appreciate you the way a daughter should. I'm sorry. Please say you can forgive me, too. Just a little,” she said, and prayed God might also forgive her.

“Oh, Ellie…”

And then, for several minutes, they both wept cleansing, healing tears of sorrow and regret, and of love and forgiveness.

Ellie wrapped her arm around her mother's shoulders and Ellie pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Dorothy Gibbs told me the other day that you always wanted to be a teacher,” she prompted, hoping to hear the details of her mother's life she'd never known.

“She's right. I always did.”

“Then why didn't you become a teacher?”

Her mother sighed. “Life was different back then. At the time, very few young women had the opportunity for both a career and a family. We had to choose, and in my father's house, there was no choice at all. He refused to waste a dime on college for me because he believed a woman's place was in the home. Period. Not that I want you to think your grandfather was an ogre. He wasn't,” she insisted. “He was just a man of his time, just as I was a woman of mine and you are of yours, which is something Reverend Fisher helped me to understand when we talked yesterday.”

Her mother sniffled, reached for a tissue and wiped away her tears. “I actually applied for a partial scholarship, but once my father got wind of it, he told me I'd better find a way to afford the rest of the tuition and have money to pay for room and board at home, too. So I got a job with Dr. Ingram, right on the avenue.”

“Where the dentist is now?” Ellie asked, to encourage her mother to continue.

“That's right. After a few years, I'd even saved up enough money to start college, but the summer before the fall semester started, I met your father. He was here visiting his cousin for the summer.”

She stopped to clear her throat. “We were young and stupid, Ellie, but we were crazy in love. One thing led to another and…Well, you'll find out after I'm gone, anyway, when you go through my papers…”

“Find out what?”

Her mother tensed for a moment before she answered. “We got married late in October that year. You were born six months later in April.”

Ellie stared at her mother. “Six months later? That can't be right. You and Daddy got married a year and six months before I was born,” she argued, repeating what she had been told all her life.

“That's what we told you when you were old enough to ask about such things. It's why we never wanted to make a fuss about our anniversary,” her mother countered.

Ellie wanted to disagree again, until she recalled being told rather pointedly that her parents wanted absolutely no part of a huge twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party she had wanted to have for them, since they hadn't had a big wedding.

“You were pregnant with me when you and Daddy got married,” Ellie murmured, voicing the obvious, and recognizing one more element behind her difficult relationship with her mother.

“I found out I was pregnant a week before my classes started, and we announced our engagement right away. I got fired from my job immediately, not that it mattered much. Your father and I got married in a quiet ceremony a few weeks later. When you were born, you were such a tiny little thing. You didn't even weigh five pounds. Most folks thought you'd just arrived earlier than you should have, but I imagine there were others who suspected you were conceived before the wedding.”

She paused and twisted her hands together. “And so now you know the shame of it. I know that times have changed and there's not much shame attached to anything today, but time can't change the fact that a sin is a sin. Your daddy and I sinned, Ellie, but even though we both took our sin straight to God and asked Him to forgive us, neither one of us ever had the courage to tell you.”

Ellie looked down at her frail and aged mother with tenderness. “It doesn't really matter when I was born,” she murmured, saddened that by becoming pregnant before being married, her mother had carried a heavy burden of shame for so long. The fact that her mother had been forced to get married instead of going to college to become a teacher also explained much of the resentment her mother had harbored against Ellie. “You chose life for me and you chose to get married and raise me. Not all young women who found themselves in similar circumstances would have done the same,” she insisted.

“No, they wouldn't,” her mother replied, “but if I had truly believed then, as I do now, that God had forgiven my sin, I wouldn't have been so jealous of you when you went off to college to live the life I'd wanted for myself.”

“I couldn't have done that without your help,” Ellie stated. Looking back, she clearly remembered now that it was her mother, not her father, who had helped her to fill out her college applications. She reminded her mother of it now.

“I'd forgotten about that,” her mother said, gazing down at her hands.

“So had I,” Ellie admitted. “I wish I'd known then how hard it must have been for you to help me.”

“I wish I had been able to tell you, but I couldn't. I just couldn't. Then the years flew by. You graduated from college, started teaching and you had your work and the students. Then you met Joe and got married, and the children came along and you had a home of your own. A real home. After you were gone and your father died, all I had left was a house filled with bitterness, disappointment and guilt, and no matter how many times I tried to decorate and redecorate that house, nothing could ever change the fact that I'd failed you most of all.”

Her mother turned and looked up at Ellie again with tear-stained cheeks. “I love you, Ellie, and I've always been proud of you. You're a gifted teacher and you were a wonderful wife and mother. No matter what I've said or done in the past, please remember that…after I'm gone. Please.”

“Always,” Ellie promised, and held her mother tight in her arms. “As long as you remember that no matter what I might have said or done, or how upset I might have been with you, I've always loved you. Always,” she whispered, knowing that all they both really needed to know was that they loved one another and were loved in return by their Creator.

Amen.

T
he day before Easter, Charlene shuffled across the lawn to the front door of Aunt Dorothy's house, determined to carry all her packages in a single trip. Juggling five shopping bags and her purse without dropping anything, took a fair bit of energy, and she had little to spare.

After spending the last few days running Aunt Dorothy to three doctor appointments, to the lab and the pharmacy, Charlene had to squeeze all her own errands to prepare for Easter into one day—today.

She had been playing telephone tag with Ellie ever since Ellie's mother had gone back into the hospital, but she hoped the Easter basket she had left on Ellie's porch would brighten her holiday a bit. She doubted, however, that anyone else would appreciate receiving a basket filled with little pieces of chocolate shaped like octopuses. Unfortunately, Charlene had not been able to get a hair appointment, but she decided she would fix her hair as nicely as she could tomorrow instead of wearing a ponytail.

Overtired and eager to get inside to relax and hopefully reclaim a bit of Easter spirit, Charlene almost groaned out loud when she spied Agnes Withers heading straight for her. Keeping a smile on her face used up the last ounce of her patience, which meant she had none left to deal with whatever gossip or problem the elderly neighbor was bringing her way.

“This is great! You can save me some steps,” Mrs. Withers said as she hurried toward Charlene, carrying a small brown lunch bag. “I stopped to wish Dorothy a happy Easter while you were out, but I forgot to give her this. I even wrote myself a note,” she admitted.

While pausing to catch her breath, she looked at Charlene and frowned. “Oh, dear. You seem to have your hands full already,” she said before she stuck the bag inside one of the larger bags Charlene was carrying. “There. That should do it. Tell Dorothy I'll call her when I get back. My son's coming any minute to pick me up. I'm spending the holiday at his home in Lancaster,” she explained. “Happy Easter to you and that sweet husband of yours,” she said, then turned and hurried back to her house.

Charlene was so taken aback that the encounter had contained neither gossip nor complaint, that by the time she murmured “Happy Easter” in reply, Mrs. Withers had already gone back inside her house.

Charlene dragged herself, her purse and her five bags into the living room, along with her remorse for misjudging her aunt's neighbor, and shut the door. She immediately glanced over to the sofa. She saw her aunt lying there resting with her lap shawl across her legs, and returned her smile. “Well, I'm finally back, and I'm not stepping a foot out of this house again until tomorrow morning,” she announced, removing her coat and laying it across the back of a chair.

Her aunt chuckled, started coughing and propped herself up on her elbow until she stopped. After grabbing a tissue and wiping her lips, she added the tissue to a pile already on the coffee table, and lay down again.

“Let me get you some water,” Charlene offered, worried that all the running around they had done over the past few days had been too taxing for her aunt.

Aunt Dorothy waved away Charlene's offer. “I'm okay now. I'm just plain tuckered out. I thought I'd get a nap in earlier, but Agnes stopped by to see me. Daniel's still working out back. I tried to tell him he didn't have to get the rest of the backyard done by tomorrow, but he's as stubborn as you are. Did you remember to drop off my note to Max Duncan?” she asked.

“I did. He wasn't home, but I gave it to the receptionist in the Towers office. She said she'd give it to him as soon as he gets home. If he's not back before she closes the office, she promised to slip it under his door,” Charlene explained.

She tried not to sigh, but adding a stop at the Towers to drop off a note to the man who had yet to call on Aunt Dorothy seemed very odd and completely unnecessary. Since he had called several times this week, she could not imagine why Aunt Dorothy couldn't tell him on the telephone whatever she had written in the note, but Charlene didn't want to pry or deny any request from Aunt Dorothy, who asked for so little.

“Good girl. You didn't run into Agnes on your way in, did you?”

“As a matter of fact I did,” Charlene said. She plucked the brown sandwich bag out of her shopping bag and carried it over to her aunt. She had suspected there might be a plastic baggie with a treat Mrs. Withers had brought home from some event, but the bag felt too light. “I'll set it here so you can look at it after your nap,” she said, and set it on top of the coffee table.

To her surprise, Aunt Dorothy sat up again, shoved the lap shawl off her legs and slowly swung her feet to the floor. “There's something in here for you and Daniel, too,” she said. She opened the bag and neatly laid out the contents on top of the table: three sticks of balsa wood, maybe five inches long and as wide as a drinking straw, three smaller pieces half that size and long, thin strands of something that looked remarkably like strips of palm.

“These are for sunrise services tomorrow. Since we couldn't get to Good Friday services yesterday because I had that doctor's appointment, Agnes was kind enough to pick all this up for us.”

Charlene furrowed her brow. “What exactly is that for?” she asked. Although she assumed the materials would be assembled into crosses, she didn't know how they would be used during the service.

“Crosses,” her aunt replied. “Come sit next to me. I'll show you how to make them so you can show Daniel.”

Charlene sat down next to her aunt.

Though her fingers trembled a bit, Aunt Dorothy managed to lay a smaller stick across a larger one to form a cross. She held it together with one hand, selected a strand of palm from the table and wrapped it around the two pieces of wood where they crossed. When she finished, she laid the cross in the palm of her hand and held it up. “See? It's easy enough to make a cross for tomorrow. It's the prayer that comes after making your cross that's harder sometimes, but that's the most important part.”

“What prayer?” Charlene asked.

“Oh, dear. I keep forgetting that you and Daniel haven't been to our sunrise services before. I guess I jumped ahead a little. Our sunrise services are held in the park down by the river. When we first get there and it's still dark outside, we get to lay our crosses on the ground at the base of the big cross that's been erected for the service. But we can't do that until we look back over the past year and pray to God to forgive us for what we've done wrong, and for all the things we didn't do that we should have done.”

Charlene swallowed hard. Even at a quick glance back over the past year at her relationship with Daniel, she saw things she regretted doing, as well as others she should have done to make their marriage stronger.

Her aunt folded her fingers around her cross and sighed wistfully. “When the sun first rises and shines on that big old cross and all those little crosses piled beneath it, you can almost see the light of Jesus shining down on us, and you know that through His death and glorious resurrection, He's fulfilled His promise to lift us all from the darkness of our sins and from death itself.”

She paused and took Charlene's hand. “I sure do like the way Daniel's eyes twinkle again when he looks at you, and I'm real proud of how you two worked together at Sweet Stuff. But you both need better glue than that to keep your marriage strong. Make your crosses together tonight. Pray together,” she urged.

Charlene squeezed her aunt's hand. “I'll ask him,” she said, adding that promise to one she had already made to herself after she and Daniel had talked about working together to revive their marriage the day of the accident at her store.

Between all the preparations for her open house and watching over Aunt Dorothy last week, Charlene and Daniel had not had any real private time together before he had gone back home again last Sunday night. Since then, he had spent the entire week back at work, and she had spent her week either at the store making sure her customers got their gift baskets, or running Aunt Dorothy around.

Daniel had driven straight here from work last night in order to finish Aunt Dorothy's yard, and he and Charlene had had no time or opportunity to discuss the next step in their efforts to revive their marriage. But Charlene knew that unless they asked God to guide them, those efforts were doomed to fail.

Aunt Dorothy, however, had just given Charlene a very fitting way to broach the subject with Daniel—one she hoped would bring them together again through their faith.

Aunt Dorothy tried to stifle a yawn, but failed. “I think I'll take that nap now,” she said.

Charlene moved off the sofa and helped her aunt by lifting her legs onto the cushions and covering them with the lap shawl again.

Still clutching her cross, Aunt Dorothy laid her head on her pillow and closed her eyes. “You won't forget to ask Daniel, will you?”

“I won't forget.”

“Good. It probably wouldn't hurt to dab on a little toilet water, too,” she murmured, and drifted off to sleep.