Today I received a letter from home. My Mom wrote me a card—it was the first one she had sent to us since we moved to Chon
buri.
But the timing of this was especially poignant. Only 10 minutes earlier, as we were driving to the post office, my sister had called from California to say that my Mom had just passed away.
It is fitting that my Mom used stationery with an image of a bird on it. I have always had a huge interest in nature type things—in this I was more like my Mom and her dad than my siblings.
This love of nature expressed itself in my early years as my trying to make a pet of whatever creature we could find in our back yard and pond. As an adolescent, I found myself following my Mom’s father’s footsteps and a joined a trail maintenance crew. Later on, with my Mom’s brother, I joined a forest fire-fighting crew.
Physically, I was more like my Mom than were my siblings. Only I had the brown eyes. Only I had the hair that did not bleach blond in the summer like my siblings. (When I was young, I was jealous of this, but now I am glad for the more sun-tolerant skin, being that I have lived in the tropics and worked outside for many years.)
We siblings have had a practice of having one of us call my mom each day to check on her. She lived alone in the house she had lived in since she got married in 1946. Today was my turn to call her, but just a couple of days ago she had e-mailed me not to call her because she was going to a party for one of her Chinese grandchildren. It was they who had called the police when my Mom did not show up at the party. (Several years ago my mom helped several Chinese people to learn English and she was adopted into their families.)
It was from my Mom that we all learned the value of service. My Mom has been a volunteer for all kinds of organizations throughout her life. For years she worked with the girl scouts. Every year our garage would fill up with cookies as it became the regional distribution center. And we would also go to help set up tents in the girl scout camp each year. (I learned how to tie a clove hitch at a very early age.)
It was in her later years when Mom volunteered with literacy volunteers, through whom she met her Chinese family.
During my younger years we hosted exchange students from Norway and Barbados, so we also have family in those countries as well. The exchange students came through a program called AFS, of which my oldest brother is now on the US Board. Perhaps it was through these exchange students, as well as our cross-country road trips, that I got an interest in things exotic and foreign. And so later I found myself living in Haiti and marrying the prettiest girl in the world, who just happened to be German-Canadian. And now I’m in Thailand.
My Mom endured the idiosyncrasies of my youth (and there were many) and told me that they made me special. And she was right—after I learned to control them, they have enabled me to adventure many places where others might not venture.
So thank you, Mom:
for loving me
for teaching me to love and serve others, no matter their race or nationality or religion
for putting up with me when most others thought me unendurable
for encouraging my curiosity and need to explore.
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
"Death is swallowed up in victory."
"O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:54-57 (ESV)
Sylvia Russell 1924-2012
Vernon Russell 1920-2006
