Perhaps Love

I went home this past week to spend a little time with my mother and to attend a Floyd family reunion. I had to get up early on Friday morning to take Mother to get an MRI at a diagnostic center just a few blocks behind her big house on Church Street. I lay in bed, taking a few extra minutes, thinking about the house, listening to the cars pass by outside the window of the room that I once shared with my two sisters over 50 years ago. It isn't exactly the same, but it hasn’t changed that much in the 40 plus years that I have been gone.

My childhood home must be way over 100 years old; and oh, if these walls could talk! I don’t mean “skeletons in the closets” kind of talk, I mean the kind of talk that families learn from, laugh about, and hold dear. As I looked around I recalled chandeliers being hit by practicing yoyos and operatic singing coming from the kitchen during the preparation of a family dinner. I could almost hear the clicking of the adding machine on Thursday nights while accounts were being balanced on Dad’s insurance books, and three teenage girls talking on the one telephone located on the desk in the middle of the house. I thought about the long hours my mother must have waited in the bathroom for me to come home from a late night date. (Did she do that for all the girls?) She listened to every detail and asked endless questions.

I began to understand and see clearly how all the memories of yesteryears, in this home, have brought comfort and peace when tragedy raises its ugly head.

I hope you will stop and think of the connections each of you are making among yourselves and those that make your house a home. I want you to be aware that when good times are spent together, over extended periods of time, it prepares you and yours for the times when things aren’t so easy. It will give you a safe place to go, even if only in your heart and mind, when and if your world comes crashing down.

We’re about to come to the anniversary of my sister’s death… I remember my Dad checked out of the nursing home, took his place at the helm of the family and held us strong, even in his weakness. We followed his lead, and, together, we did what would have been impossible to do alone. Then the time came that we had to persevere without Dad…and because of his example and his love, we did just that.

I love the line in the old John Denver song that says:

“Perhaps love is like a resting place
A shelter from the storm
It exists to give you comfort
It is there to keep you warm
And in those time of trouble
When you are most alone
The memory of love will bring you home.”

I pray these times will be few in your lives, but they are part of life, and if you live long enough, they will happen. Just remember, you can always gather around each other to cushion the blows as well as to share the laughter.

“If I should live forever
And all my dreams come true
My memories of love will be of you.”

Mom/Mimi

P.S. Mom’s MRI showed a small stroke. She is fine, and on a medication that, we hope, will prevent it from happening again; but keep her in your prayers. She loves you so.

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Oh! At the Floyd Family reunion (this was the 10th year that the reunion has taken place) Rep. Stratton Bone from the Great State of Tennessee came for what we thought was to be a speech about why one of our favorite family members, Edsel Cordell Floyd, was honored by the State by having a bridge in Watertown named after him, but instead got up and presented the family with a House of Representatives Proclamation honoring the Floyd Family itself. Wow! The proclamation is quite impressive (I'm sure another favorite family member and historian, Kenneth Anderson Floyd, must have supplied the detailed data!). You come from a good family, kids, pass it on.

http://picasaweb.google.com/fweakijam/FloydFamilyProclamation?authkey=hFJrBQZVq5E