We buried my mom on Monday. (I’ve stared at this sentence for a bit – that’s a big statement! You only write that statement once in your lifetime.)  Spending the day with family kind of meant the whole day was a prolonged service with story after story emerging, different facets of my mom emerging from each person. I will treasure the day as a day of closure for sure, but as a rich day of family connection, of personal connection with the past, a clarifying day of family history.

                      At the end of the day, I took my brother and our wives, to a little beach on a little extension of land that protrudes into Tampa Bay from the banks of the Manatee River. It’s a place where my brother has received many a sunset picture but had never been. The stories of the day continued there as we enjoyed a picnic supper in our beach chairs. God put on a wonderful master’s painting class as we watched the colors of the sun change in rapid succession.

As we talked and watched, mullet jumped here and there, but a lone dolphin stole the show, gently patrolling the beachfront, I imagine fishing for the same food that fisherman way out on a sandbar were seeking. The dolphin came from the left, swam past us, and then almost immediately turned around. Some might suggest that was my mom waving goodbye — I don’t think so, I don’t know that I’ve seen that dolphin before, but dolphins passing by there at that time of day happens often. It’s a thing.

But it was a blessing. I was so happy to have it go by so my brother could see it. There’s something wonderful about the big animal passing by so closely and with such grace. I did thank the Lord for blessing us with that image – like my mother, the people of our lives pass by closely and with grace, and as quickly as they come, so they pass. God’s mercies are new every morning (says Lamentations 3), but they must be savored and given thanks for quickly, because they fade quickly, too. Isaiah 90 comes to mind:

Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death —

they are like the new grass of the morning:

In the morning, it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered.

The most significant of the natural signs that evening come in the sunset itself. When there is not a cloud in the sky, the colors change, uniformly, but without much flare. Too many clouds and you can lose the sunset altogether. This evening, many clouds, and different kinds of clouds, enriched the sky. It was a complicated and nuanced canvas that God painted that evening. And full of symbolic meaning for us.

My brother told a wonderful story about a group of kids that came from the US for a missions trip to Costa Rica that my dad and he were helping. At the end of the trip, they took them to the Pacific side of the country, and they watched the sunset. Some pubescent (and not bright) boys loved the sunset so much that they resolved to get up early and watch the sun rise. To their credit, they woke before dawn, sat down at the beach where they had been, waiting for the sun to rise. It started to get bright, they got excited, but they never saw the sun. Until it was visible through the palm trees behind them, that is. You may be laughing, as I was when he told the story. Why?

Because you know that from the beginning of time, until it someday comes to an end, the sunrise is as predictable as the sunset. It happens every day. Without fail. But yes, one in the East and one in the West. And that evening, the evening of the day we buried my mom, the sun set on the life that we knew with her, her presence as regular as the sun’s rising in the morning but not anymore, punctuated by the beautiful sunset. The complexity, and the beauty, of the sunset that evening, and the promise of the sun rising tomorrow (always a symbol of resurrection) put an exclamation point on the day, on my mom’s life, on the grace of God though it all.

Grateful,

Craig

From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised.

Psalm 113:3 (NIV)