At Season's End

The summer's over. A slight dip in the temperature, night falls sooner, back-to-school sale signs fill shop windows, college students spill out of the bars in my neighborhood, people leave for or return from one last trip to the beach or the mountains, the flip-flops go into the back of the closet.

The end of every season typically makes me a bit wistful and sad. I tend to think about all the things I was SUPPOSED to do to enjoy the season, but inevitably failed to do. This summer my "list of misseds" includes Shakespeare in the Park, taking a good book and blanket into the Sheep Meadow, free music at South Street, a walk along the Brooklyn Promenade at sunset with some ice cream from Blue Pig... sigh.

But this weekend changed my take on end-of-season nostalgia and regret. I was in Granville, OH to attend the funeral of my maternal grandmother, Janet Clark Widmer. It was bitter and sweet in all the right ways. At the simple, graveside service, surrounded by family and her friends, we said goodbye--in the sight and earshot of God. The service began with the proclamation from Romans that "nothing in life or death can separate us from the love of God"; we read Psalms and the Gospel, a retired minister who knew Janet said a few, short, powerful words about her character, and together we commended her Spirit into the hands of the Almighty with tears and smiles.

In the presence of God, I rarely find much room for wishing life was something other than it is. I feel I can be refreshingly honest. Janet's life wasn't roses and no one pretended it was. We talked about her difficulties and struggles. But there was also no choice, in God's presence, but to celebrate the precious and fragile gift of her presence on earth--the "I know something that you don't" twinkle in her eyes, her dry humor, her friendship, her immense patience, and her commitment to education and to the welfare of her children and grandchildren.

When I remind myself that everything I do is in the sight and within earshot of my Creator--a Creator whose love for me is eternal, I find that I lose all desire to complain about how things "should be." I am more willing to accept where I am. I am in the presence of God who will never abandon me--in the presence of a God for whom every human life--every minute of every life--is precious, and none is wasted.

The summer's over. There's tons that I didn't do. But I know that what was--because it happened in the loving presence of God, was much, much better than any notion I might have of what might have been.