Around this time of year while preparing for Christmas, I think a good deal about my mother’s passing eleven years ago on December 8, 2013. Of course, many of us in this season are not only celebrating but remembering those who are no longer with us. It’s a peculiar feeling when celebration and sorrow converge.
The day before on December 7, 2013, my son Charlie, ten years old at the time, and I went to Waco to watch the Baylor-Texas football game that would decide which team would win the Big 12 Conference Championship that season. The game was also the last Baylor would ever play in Floyd Casey Stadium where I had grown up going to games as a kid with my own mom, dad, and siblings.
When we arrived at our seats, we had to scrape ice off our spots on the metal bleachers, and it only got increasingly colder as the game progressed. We were bundled up tightly, with Charlie wearing one of those funny hats you sometimes see on the ski slopes—one with colorful tentacles sticking out in all directions.
Contrary to my experience at many Baylor-Texas football games—and I’ve attended many—this Baylor team, led by their terrific quarterback Bryce Petty, handed the Longhorns a loss on that frigid evening, and as the final seconds ticked off the clock, thousands of Baylor fans descended onto the field to celebrate the win. Charlie and I really needed to make a quick exit from the stadium to escape the traffic for our three and a half hour trip back to Houston, but as we began to go, Charlie asked me, “Dad, can we go down there?” So, down we went onto the field to watch a memorable trophy ceremony. I even snapped a picture—iconic now in our family—of Charlie with a big grin on his face on the field with an elated Bryce Petty, the quarterback’s big hand on Charlie’s funny hat. Enjoying the victory, we finally thawed out on the way home, arriving in Houston well after midnight.
Just a few hours later, very early in the morning, my sister, who was staying with my mother and her caregivers in Houston a few weeks before Christmas, called to say that Mom had passed away around midnight. My mother’s health had been declining precipitously over the last few months, but it was still kind of a shock that morning in the way that even expected news of this nature can be. I quickly went over to the house—the home I grew up in—and helped with all that needed to be done, then went to church in a subdued frame of mind, finding some, but only a measure of consolation in the Sanctuary.
The next week was filled with preparations for my mother’s memorial service—my brother, sisters, and I trying to write an obituary then plan a service that would honor her and bring us another dose of consolation, the kind a meaningful service can offer. First, we debated about what hymns to sing and ended up choosing Fairest Lord Jesus, as that was one of Mom’s favorites. For the last hymn at the end of the service, we decided on Joy to the World. It might seem a little unusual to sing Joy to the World at a memorial service, but we thought it made sense in the Christmas season. Mom would’ve most certainly approved as it reflected her deep faith, as well as her lovely and joyful outlook on life despite the poor health she endured over the last third of her life. Stricken with neurological problems and dementia-like symptoms around age 55, her condition continued to decline over a twenty-three-year period, her eyesight deteriorating, followed by an inability to remember words, to speak, to walk, until finally, she was fully bedridden.
Even now, I haven’t completely made sense of all her suffering and the way it abbreviated her life, but the service tracked the arc of her days beautifully—her childhood, her vocation as an occupational therapist working with polio and burn patients, how she taught disabled children at church, her marriage, family, and devotion to God, as well as her sense of humor and grace. We grieved the difficulty of her life and felt the sadness of her absence, taking inspiration from her story. But in a most unexpected way, it was Joy to the World that was most consoling. There was consolation in how we, at Christmastime, together with her friends and our own friends, sang the Christmas story. “Repeat the sounding joy,” we sang, again and again. It felt, well, death-defying. Death-defyingly joyful.
Somehow, in fact, it felt a lot like victory.
God—Bless now those who mourn. Amen.
