Anniversaries should still be celebrated

May 14, 1960, in the early morning hours between midnight and daylight, my daddy (Harold Whitten Motte, Sr.) died of a heart attack the week before he was scheduled to have open heart surgery at the Medical College Hospital in Charleston, SC (now part of the Medical University of South Carolina). I was a high school junior and had been to the Junior-Senior Prom at McClenaghan High School. I came home, went in to kiss him goodnight and never saw him alive again.

I usually just mark the date in my mind when I recognize it on the calendar. I haven't actually been to my parents gravesites in some time, never taking flowers for their graves, as I have been doing for Tim's. (Actually I took some bright yellow flowers out to his grave this afternoon; yes, yellow. I actually found a baby yellow begonia for the house last weekend, too.)

I have never thought of my parents as being at the cemetery... until Tim died I had always thought of them as being far, far away in some blurry expanse of clouds, doing something peaceful and restful. And dull and boring.

Mother died in 1970 so daddy was already there, maybe getting a home ready for them to share, I thought. What else was there for him to do? I had no idea. Now I realize that they are both very busy with work assignments and learning opportunities, and also enjoying music, praise and worship as they did here on earth.

Oh yes, I'm sure they're participating in music somehow. "Daddy sang bass, Mama sang tenor, me and little brother would join right in there," the old song goes. I'm not sure if daddy really sang bass, but he played a banjo and sang with a barbershop quartet off and on.

I don't remember ever hearing mama sing but she did love music. After he died she taught herself to play the piano, playing a variety of hymns for her own enjoyment. She taught a children's Sunday School class and loved to teach the little kids some gospel songs and choruses, so I guess she must have had to sing them herself. I bet she continued practicing in heaven, playing the piano while daddy plays banjo - or some new instruments they have discovered along the way. And I bet Tim plays his French horn or sings right along with them.

Imagine all the instruments ever invented throughout all of human history, plus some still yet to be discovered here on earth, all being used to glorify God. Not all played at once, but in combinations small or large, glorious melodies and harmonies. I don't believe all music in heaven is necessarily religious but it must certainly all be wonderful. Love songs. Folk tunes. Maybe even beach music, that would be a blast!

Some weeks back I had a mental image of a great pipe organ with pipes of crystal, not metal, and I could almost hear that sound. The depth and height of those octaves can't be duplicated on earth! I played a big pipe organ for some years, and I still get a thrill from hearing those deep rumbling bass pipes and the high, high flutes.

This week I had a mini-vision of a different kind of piano among all the musical instruments in heaven. Instead of the soundboard and strings being encased in a wooden box, these strings were completely exposed in a large separate frame. There were far more octaves than on my Baldwin Acrosonic. The player sat in front of the keyboard facing this great frame of strings across a short distance, maybe a few yards. As a key was pressed, a grouping of strings for that note was struck by the hammer. It was still a piano sound, but what a sound! It makes me want to find an inventor and have him construct one for me, here and now.

This past week as I realized it was the 47th anniversary of daddy's death, instead of visualizing a boring, cloudy expanse, I visualized daddy, mama and Tim in a noisy concert hall full of fun and laughter, music and melody, where fabulous pianos, crystal pipe organs, gold and silver French horns and every other imaginable and unimaginable instrument is being put to good use. Think what those rehearsals must be like!

So I celebrated that date a little differently this year, entering into their marvelous musical joy and excitement. As I'm sure you can tell, I no longer think of heaven as a dull and boring place.

Begonia

No, it's not yellow, but it does have green leaves... And no, it's not in a cement planter, it's in a flower pot up on a stand. But I see it every day as I come and go, water it and talk to it a bit. I tell it "You're such a pretty plant, a pretty flower, bloom, bloom, bloom." We'll see if I can keep it healthy during the spring and summer.

I went to the cemetery and collected the red, white and blue silk flower arrangement from Tim's grave. Still in place and intact, it looked pretty good despite the several windy rain storms in the last few months. I noticed scattered flowers from other arrangements here and there that had blown off the stems but none of mine seemed to be missing any blossoms.

The large red ones had faded somewhat (as expected in our South Carolina spring sunshine) but the white and blue flowers still look like new. The styrofoam I had stuck the stems into had broken into several chunks, though. I definitely need a more sturdy base. A wire form, maybe? I'll make another trip to Hobby Lobby for flower replacements and see if one of the staff there can suggest something.

Even though Tim won't care if there are flowers at the cemetery or not, I think I'll keep some there for a while, for other people's benefit.

The present arrangement will go into a vase to keep here at home, faded red flowers and all. Actually, I like it. It was my first attempt at silk flower arranging and I did a pretty good job if I say so myself.

Heartstrings

I read two newspapers every morning, our local (Florence) Morning News and the State Paper. I make a mental note of events going on within driving distance and ask myself -- do I want to make the effort to attend this? Usually I answer, no, not really. Not enough.

Some are things I know Tim and I would have enjoyed, like town festivals. Some are speakers, singing groups, sometimes plays; perhaps I would enjoy it, perhaps not. But getting the motivation to actually go there, do that, is the hardest part of this daily decision-making process.

Yes, I have the time. Yes, I have the money to buy gas and tickets to get in. Yes, I have the interest, sort of. But no, I don't have the inclination, motivation, gumption, get-up-and-go to actually do it. Too many remembrances are attached...

I think of all the events Tim and I attended together over the last 24 years or so. (We would have been married 22 years on Christmas Day, 2006.) When we first started dating, he was a member of multiple boards and commissions across South Carolina, community based health organizations or civic groups.

He owned his own car, even though he was blind. He said it was always easier to get someone to drive him to a meeting if he had the car, and that was true. I started driving him from meeting to meeting, and we got to know each other better along the way.

One in particular was a speaking engagement to an ADA (diabetes association) meeting in Beaufort. That one took many hours of travel to and from. Because I was driving him, I often got to sit in and listen to whatever was going on, even board meetings. That was quite interesting and educational for me.

Tim was a state board member of the South Carolina Chapter of the American Diabetes Association and over the years I came to know several other board members. After attending Crimestoppers of the Pee Dee board meetings with Tim, I eventually was invited to become a board member also. We did that together for about ten years.

Full Gospel Businessmen's chapters in both South and North Carolina would invite Tim to give his testimony, and he sometimes would sing with soundtracks as well as speak. One song he especially liked to sing was "He Didn't Lift Me Up to Let Me Down." I loved to hear him sing.

Tim's solo singing ended after his heart bypass surgery. His voice box was damaged by the airway down his throat and he went from being a tenor to a baritone. After he recovered from that surgery he didn't like the way his voice sounded and it was way more of an effort to do it. Pretty soon he stopped singing with backup tapes. But he played his french horn for church services, refocusing all his breath and energy into worshiping and praising the Lord that way.

And we kept on traveling, Tim attending or speaking at lots of meetings and me driving sometimes, or us taking in festivals and conventions and concerts sometimes.

I'm not interested enough in traveling alone, I guess, to go to many of those things by myself. I can still talk to Tim as I drive, talk to the Lord, listen to good music or tapes in the car, but it's not the same. Maybe one day, but not yet.

So I'm finding new things to do, things we never did together, places we didn't go, events we didn't attend. These don't bother me much and they are becoming part of our new NOW life together. I see people and places from the viewpoint of how Tim might be seeing them (he actually is if I ask him to). It's fresh and different, with no backward looks, no reminiscences of past occasions that remind me how much I miss Tim's physical presence.

Like my grand-nephew Jesse's Little League baseball games. I went to a mid-season playoff game this morning, sat with his grandparents Harold and Mary Lois to watch him play and enjoyed it. No twinges of grief and sadness, no remembering the last time Tim and I did this, because we never did this, and it was okay. It was really okay.

Tomorrow I'm driving down to the beach. I plan to attend church with Tim's daughter Angie, her husband Vernie, 5 year old Bella and 2 year old Liam. I will have lunch with them, hang out for a few hours and then attend Bella's dance recital at Coastal Carolina University at 5:00 PM. Tim and I did go to church with them one Sunday last year but we didn't attend Bella's last dance recital, I don't remember exactly why right now.

The last time I drove to the beach alone was Christmas Day, ten days after Tim died, to have lunch with his family. That was very, very hard. I'm counting on tomorrow's drive to be easier.

And I'm counting on all tomorrow's events to be okay, too. Tim and I will see them together. He will be able to see them! It will all be new and fresh, and it will be okay. Really okay.