Family Death

My Mom’s oldest sister, Shirley, died last week.

I have never had any real connection to my extended family. Beyond my own Mother and Father, I only know my aunts and uncles and cousins from a distance, like familiar acquaintances who smile and make small talk over dinner every few years.

When I was still in First Grade my parents moved away from their own families in Tennessee and set their eyes towards South Texas. This is where I grew up. This is where my identity was shaped and my character was formed. I’ve actually thanked God for taking my family out of the environment I had been born into and transplanting me into a more modern world where race wasn’t an indicator of value and fear wasn’t a commodity.

Most of my childhood friends and several of my cousins who remained behind and grew up in that place are very different from me. I do believe that had I remained in the small Tennessee town where I was born I would have had a radically different life. I’m thankful to have left and to have had the life I’ve had so far.

Still, last night, laying with my head on the pillow, in the glow of an almost-full moon, I couldn’t help but wonder about the extensive family I left behind in Tennessee. They are the family I will never belong to. They are the flesh and blood that will never know me, and I will never know them—not as well as they know one another.

My parents were the city folk who left town and never looked back. We were the ones who would come back once ever few years for summer vacation or occasional family reunions, but as such we were visitors, tourists, in a place each of them called “home” and I knew only as a touchstone of childhood.

Today, as I consider the death of my Mother’s oldest sister, I am nursing an un-named ache deep within my chest. I have lost something I cannot name, but the more I contemplate this loss the more I know for certain that this loss is forever buried under an avalanche of years that I can never unearth or resurrect.

I am mourning the loss of a family that I was never fully embraced into to begin with. My yearning is for a place of acceptance among a people with whom I share a lineage and a legacy, but nothing more. We have no shared life, no shared memories, no deep connections beyond memories held like dreams in old photographs yellowed and fading in the sunlight.

Can I confess that I regret never growing old with those people? Can I admit that I wish with all my heart that I could have belonged to those people and that they could have known me and loved me as deeply as I now long to be loved and known?

My family, beyond my own parents, are like strangers to me. They do not know me. They have less awareness of me than the hundreds of Facebook friends who read my articles and respond to my status updates or make comments on my blog.

I am saddened to realize that these people will, one by one, all pass away from this life and remain strangers to me. My children will grow old and get married and have children and none of them will ever know or care. I will breathe my own last breath one day, and none of them will travel the hundreds of miles necessary to stand at my graveside or lay a comforting hand on the shoulders of my wife or children. This is my family. This is the tribe I will never know. This is the lost side of my soul that I can never excavate or replace.

Until today I didn’t realize just how much I needed them. Until today I didn’t know how much this missing piece of me mattered. But now I do. I realize these things too late. I understand the power of family when it’s of no use to me.

So, today as I say goodbye to Shirley Ferrell Wyatt, I mourn the family that I never knew. I pray for her son and her daughter who remain in my memory as elementary-aged children running barefoot on the Tennessee grass. I pray for the sisters who grieve their loss. I pray for the cousins who let go of their dear Aunt. I ask God to comfort them in their sadness, and I am grateful that they have one another to shoulder the burden during this time of regret. For that I am thankful. For that I give thanks.

Peace,
Keith

Remembering Mary Ann Serna

Our Mission House Church is mourning the loss of our dear sister in Christ who passed away Saturday evening from brain cancer.

I've posted some photos and a bit of how we celebrated her life yesterday at house church over on the Mission House Church website HERE

This morning I found this article I had written about Mary Ann back in July of last year and I wanted to post it here as a remembrance of her life and the impact she had on me, my family, and our house church family.

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[Subversive Underground] Friday, July 04, 2008
THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION
by Keith Giles

My friend Mary Anne has cancer. She's sixty one years old and she's been part of our Mission House Church family for almost exactly one year now.

When I first met her she was living at the Salvation Army Hospitality House for the homeless.

For many years Mary Anne had been a school teacher here in Orange County. She loves children and loved teaching. Even today she still misses her classroom and her students.

For a time Mary Anne slept on our sofa. Even though she had a retirement pension from her many years as a teacher, she had cashed it out early to care for her son in his time of need a few years ago. When it came time to retire she found herself out of a job, and out of a house and home.

Eventually God opened a door for Mary Anne at a local retirement home. It was just down the street from us so we got to see her often and she continued to come to our house church gatherings each week.

About a month ago Mary Anne had a 3 inch tumor removed from her brain. You wouldn't believe how quickly she's recovered from her surgery, but there's still a network of melanoma tumors spider-webbed throughout her brain mass.

So, last Sunday our church family gathered around her and laid hands on her and prayed for God to heal her. Children and adults gathered around her and cried out to God for mercy, for healing and for restoration of health.

Afterwards we listened as Mary Anne shared with us about God's peace and how even though the Doctors say she is terminal, she feels fine and full of life. Better yet, she's witnessing God's ministry of reconciliation as her son is restored to her after years of estrangement, and her daughter is being reconciled to her father, and Mary Anne's brother is seeking out a renewed relationship with her after years of separation.

We reflected on how God seems to be using this sickness in Mary Anne's life to radiate healing through her life to heal relationships. Because of this terminal cancer God is restoring a son to his mother, a brother to his sister, and a daughter to her father.

Only God can do this. Only God can heal these wounds and restore these broken relationships.

One of our leaders in the house church, Kelly, remarked on how God's desire is to heal us completely. Not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally and psychologically. God desires to heal us and nurture us inside and out. He delights in making us whole and complete.

We shared together from 2 Corinthians 5, verses 17 through 20, where Paul reminds us: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us."

Each of us in the Body of Christ has been given this same ministry of reconciliation. We are to be peacemakers. Even as Jesus encouraged us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." (Matthew 5:9), we are to be people of peace, people who bring reconciliation in our wake.

So, for today, Mary Anne basks in the peace of God, knowing that He is in control of her life. She knows that God is at work through her sickness, and that for now He is using even this to reconcile her family and restore these relationships. Her hope is that each of them will come to know Jesus as she knows Him, to love Him as she loves Him, and to trust Him as she trusts Him...with her very life.

In time, we pray that God would heal her cancer. We will continue to pray together every time we gather for God's mercy and healing in Mary Anne's body, and until then we will rejoice for the ministry of healing and reconciliation that is radiating out of her in every direction to soften hearts and restore her family.

As Mary Anne said to me last Sunday, "God is faithful."

Amen.

-kg
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