TELL YOUR STORY

Easter 2017

Dear Emily,

The content of this letter is actually the introduction that I used for the Easter cantata.  

     "Whoop-ooo!!”  When I was a little girl, that sound was the way that my grandfather let my grandmother know “I need for you to come and I need for you to come right now!”  And my grandmother, wherever she was, whether she was in the house or in the yard, would call back “Whoopoo!”  That sound meant, “I heard you and I’m on my way.” 

     You see when I was a child, my grandfather was diagnosed with hardening of the arteries – a terrible disease that affected him both physically and mentally.  I have very few memories of my grandfather ever being able to walk.  Most of my memories are of him being bedridden.  But he was at home and my grandmother, of course, was his nurse.  She seldom left him for any reason.

That’s why on the third Sunday in May, Decoration Day at Allen Cemetery, she would call my house early in the morning and say “Why don’t you come home from church with Uncle Jay today and help him take the flowers to the cemetery?”  Uncle Jay was my bachelor uncle who lived with my grandparents and ran the dairy farm. 

     My grandmother had an amazing green thumb and early on the third Sunday morning in May, she would cut many of her beautiful flowers and arrange them in her best vases.  She would walk me around her front hall and explain to me exactly where each vase of flowers was to be placed at the cemetery. 

     “Now this large arrangement, Brenda, goes on your great-grandparents’ graves: Mr. Rom and Miss Elizabeth – Mr. “Rom” Romulus was a twin, but his brother Remus died as a baby.  Mr. Rom fought in the Civil War and when he married Elizabeth Morgan, they moved into this house.  When your grandfather and I married, we moved in with them and took care of them until they died.”

Then she would point to another arrangement.  “Put these flowers on MY mother’s grave – it’s in the back of the cemetery.  My mother died when she was only thirty-six, but she had had seven children by then – buried two of them.”  She pointed to a smaller arrangement.  “Put this on my little brother Charlie’s grave.  Charlie was only two when he died.  We never really knew what happened to Charlie, but we always thought that he swallowed too many watermelon seeds.  (No joke – she really told me that!)  And put these roses on my sister Sally’s grave – Sally died of pneumonia when she was twelve.  I was only nine at the time and Sally was my best friend. 

     On and on she would go around the room, pointing to other arrangements and explaining where they should go.  And late that afternoon, when Uncle Jay had finished milking, she would say, “Let’s ride up to the cemetery and look at the flowers.”  We would walk around the cemetery, and she would tell me more stories about people who had been buried there long before I came along.  One grave that had always interested me was that of Zora Lee Wallace. Her stone is a beautiful scroll with the inscription “Weep not Mother and Daddy for me for I wait in glory for thee.”   “Grandmama, what happened to Zora Lee?  She was only twenty when she died. “  “Well, she drowned in the river while on a picnic.  Your granddaddy helped rescue her body.” 

     Now you may think that all of this sounds a bit morbid, but I was fascinated by her stories.  I was a great deal older before I realized that she was not merely entertaining me – she was sharing with me the stories of people and events that had helped to shape her into the person that she was.  And every time she told the stories, those people lived again for her, and they came to life for me. They were no longer just a name on a stone. It’s important to share our stories with others.  It important to let others know about the people and events that have helped make us who we are.

     At Easter we celebrate what has been called the “Greatest Story Ever Told.”  In the words of that wonderful old hymn “I love to tell the story.  Will be my theme in glory – to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love.”  As we share the music of the cantata, on behalf of the choir I encourage you to ask yourself – “When was the last time that I shared the story?  When was the last time that I told someone how my life has been affected by Jesus and his Amazing Love?