What She Left

The Thanksgiving holiday is coming to a close and I find my heart finally ready to write a few words regarding those things for which I am thankful.  As with most people, I am thankful for many things.  However this year I would like to resist the urge to rattle off a long list.  Rather than pour out a flood of thanks and have the importance of a single drop be lost in the deluge, I’ll keep my thanks to one thing.  

It has been almost three years since my mother-in-law died.  When she was alive, we did not always see eye-to-eye but I do believe she loved me, as I did her.  When my family went back to the house for Thanksgiving this year, it was not the same.  Her absence made a big difference.  The house is changing with the times and the place that was so much of her is slowly becoming less and less so.  Nevertheless, here and there, in a forgotten corner, you can still find a picture or a trinket.  Or perhaps a note written in her hand.  Little reminders that she was once here and left some things behind.  

I am thankful for the stuff she left.  Not the stuff left in the house, or the things she gave my wife before she died.  But the things she left in us.  I can find pieces of her in my wife.  There are traces of her in my kids.  She even left a bit of herself in me.   Carolyn Hardyman is with our Lord.  She has made the journey to her eternal home.  But not before leaving a part of herself in many of us who must remain here a little longer.  We are better for it.  And so, this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for what she left behind.