Sheliah's Glasses

I didn't know her well...just as the mother of my precious friend, Holly and the grandmother of Lexie, Avery and Sidney Fields who are among my favorite young people at the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour.

But when I attended Sheliah Page's memorial service I learned so many special things about her that I wished I had taken an opportunity to know her better.

Her daughter, Heidi, remembered her mother  helping another family in need and one of her neighbors told me how she gave up her parking place when the neighbor returned from lung surgery, still having much difficulty breathing.  This was an especially endearing gift, since Shelia herself had COPD. 

And then her daughter, Molly, the one Sheliah  wisely gave up for adoption but had been reunited with earlier this year, told me that her adopted mother had told her that it was important to Sheliah  that her baby be raised in the church and that is exactly what happened.  So much that Molly chose to be a teacher in a Christian school.

One of the neatest things about the memorial was a display of reading glasses.  There must have been 50 pair.  And if you were fortunate enough to be looking at it when one of her girls were also there you heard this:

"Take a pair of the glasses" And I did.


Earlier that day I had received a message from my friend Dr. Keith Holland: Stich is dead and Pascal is dying.

Six words and yet a depth of emotion. .  And if you read my blog regularly- you know that I am talking about the squirrels that Keith  had been caring for after they were left to fend for themselves when a hawk got their mama and they fell to the ground in the yard of one of the Jacksonville dentist's  patients.

Talk about getting attached to an animal.  Keith is grappling with questions like "what did I do?" and "what could I have done differently?.

I think what he did was give a little girl an opportunity to learn first hand about life - and death. 

And that helps her with living.

And of course, both of these things happened on what we celebrate as All Saints Sunday.  The day set aside for "remembering".  I know I don't have to have a day set aside.  I always remember!

And now that it is November I am remembering the birth of two little girls who call me mom and  have grown into dedicated Christian women.  When I was growing up and actually until I was 24 years old, it was in November that we celebrated my maternal grandmother, Pauline Nesmith's birthday.

It is also the month that I got that telephone call and heard a doctor say "your husband did not survive".

"It is both natural and proper to grieve for those loved ones who pass beyond our sight", Keith said in his message about the squirrels.

And it is good to have something tangible to help us remember - I have a photo of the squirrels, Rich Suhey's name, and Sheliah's glasses.