Family Fabric
We finally made the trek to Connecticut to celebrate my mother’s life, almost a year and a half after she passed away. I’m not sure why our time together felt so remarkable in every way, but everyone there felt it.
The reunion of 24 of us from 12 states was part of it. We had not all been together for decades, and shared movies and memories of childhood, and memories of Mom. The service in the UCC church that my family, as founding members, had literally helped to build, was part of it. Unchanged and enduring, with the golden cross that my grandfather donated and placed there, still hanging from the center of the 12-sided, in-the-round meeting house.
The cemetery where all the related families rest together, in the same corner, under ancient trees and markers, was part of it. As was the gathering afterwards, in the club where aunts and uncles and grandparents had taken us as children. It was a perfect quirk of fate that the waitress who helped us that day had been there 44 years, and remembered them all.
I stayed an extra day or two to do one of my family history pilgrimages: visits to the churches I’ve located with stained glass windows created by my mother’s family. It was a remarkable journey of revelations of incredible works of art done a hundred years ago – all lost to our family maybe forever, if not for the wonder of Google and too many late nights following search threads to destinations on a map.
In this remarkable visit, all those separate threads – cousins, childhood memories, and sacred spaces - came together to be more than threads – instead weaving the fabric of our family. Evidence of enduring history that is still there, even if forgotten. Einstein said time is a river – but maybe it is more like a flowing bolt of fabric, with threads and images fixed along the way. Reassurance in times like these filled with personal loss, and national and global grief, of the enduring threads of human connection that bring life’s loose ends together, turning it all into something beautiful, after all.
Heavenly Father, thank you for the joyful memories we carry with us on our journey, that comfort us and lighten our load in troubling times – Amen
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. - John 16:33
Diana is a founding member of Peace Church, and continues to delight in the treasure hunt of her stained glass window discoveries around the Country.