2024/8 UNSENT

Yesterday, in an attempt to sort through some of the randomness in our home, I dug into a box of stuff that looked like it might have once been in Dave’s nightstand or study drawers. Besides receipts, warranties, letters and photographs, I found a little stack of hand- written thank you notes. I recognized the tidy handwriting as that of our son, John. There are seven thoughtful thank you cards for high school graduation gifts… unsent. John is now older than I was when he wrote those! His second child is about to graduate from high school. 

I’m frankly pretty impressed at the notes he wrote. I’m also reminded of this apparent family flaw that puts so much effort into stuff we never quite finish. Perhaps he gave those notes to us to address and mail. Who knows? Even if I wanted to mail them now at least one of the people has an address somewhere in Heaven.

I also had, until very recently, a hefty stack of unsent thank you cards from way back when Dave finished his tenure as mayor of Farmington. Our remarkable and thoughtful neighbors went together and purchased a flagpole for our front yard. We came home from vacation that summer to a crisp new American flag waving in the east wind in front of our home. It was a surprise, and really very tender and moving to us. I designed and printed some small cards with American flags on them. That next month my mother ended up in the hospital for quite a while. I remember sitting at her bedside writing heartfelt sentiments to these kind neighbors on those cards. I addressed and even stamped them.

It’s been so long now I threw them away, offering a prayer of apology, hoping the Powers that be would one day reiterate our gratitude to them. Our neighbors never knew how very much their gift has meant to us.

I recall another time, when our Kate was a newborn baby. Dave’s Grandma Roy had been in the hospital. I thought I should call a florist in Florida and send flowers, so she would know we were thinking of her and we loved and cherished her. Day turned to night then to day, and night and so on… until we got the call that Grandma Roy had passed away. I remember sitting in my rocking chair nursing little Kate, my tears dropping on her baby blanket. My feelings spilled into words. Wrangled into a poem. “The Flowers I Never Sent”. It alluded to the fact that I had intended to send flowers when she was alive, but now was calling the florist to send them for her grave. I’ve lost the poem, but not the pang of sadness.

I have learned to try to be more gentle with myself. I discovered late in life that I have a brain with attention issues. Guilt over that weakness is a poor motivator. I’ve found love to be more effective. I now speak in gentler terms to myself. Still, while the words I choose in my self-talk are more encouraging, they nonetheless whisper that I should finish my tasks. Push through all the way to the end. I have a dreadfully strong mechanism that urges me to stop just before something is complete. So many unfinished songs!

My advice for the day is to complete something all the way through. Get that card in the mail. Hem those pants that have been sitting in your closet for a year. Eat that chocolate you're storing in the pantry.

I also have a nice collection of gift cards for restaurants and stores that are now out of business. So much unsent and unspent!

2024/7 FAKING OUT THE TOOTH FAIRY

Tessa's fake tooth.

My Brother-in-law, Michael is an oral surgeon. A good one, I understand. He was known as an exceptional surgeon for dental implants. Libby used to drive our mom to CA just so Michael could take care of her. He was thorough, precise and gentle. Besides, he’s an artist, which is a plus when you’re dealing with people’s faces. My whole adult life I’ve joked that as soon as Michael retired I would need a dental implant. Tip #1: do not say such things aloud.

I couldn't find a photo of Mike online, but here's a review report.

Sure enough, he retired and moved from CA to Utah, right into our neighborhood. That makes four of us “Hansen” sisters in one teeny neighborhood going to the same church each Sunday. We’re taking over the ward! And sure enough within a year of him retiring I had a root canal go south and they ended up pulling the tooth. A top tooth, right near the front of my mouth. A “smiley” tooth. It surely cramped my style, taxed my already delicate dental-emotions, and hit the pocketbook somethin’ fierce when we had to go through the “implant” process with no Dr. Mullen to handle it. 

After three hours in the dental chair and coming out without a pivotal tooth, I started the months long wait for my mouth to heal around the foreign matter placed in my jawbone, or whatever it is you call the bone your teeth are planted in. They made me a thing called a “flipper” with a fake tooth in it. I called it a pride tooth, because its only real purpose was to fill the black hole. Tip #2: Keep that flipper in a place you can remember.

$600 for two lost flippers and one completely failed implant later, I was sitting backstage during the third night of my Christmas concerts. Backstage banter with my boys Mark Robinette, Kelly DeHaan, Aaron Ashton and Timo Petersen, includes stuff like "I lost my tooth, Guys!" I lamented that somewhere between last night’s show and tonight’s I lost my second flipper. I was trying not to be distressed, but in less than an hour I would be center stage with a spotlight on my face, trying to sing while trying to hide the black hole in my mouth. We discussed possible solutions: how about one of those cubes of white cheese on the greenroom platter? We wet and folded paper but decided the moisture in my mouth would turn the thing into pulpy mush. I even tried forming a piece of gum into the shape of a tooth, but all I had was Spearmint Extra gum, which is chartreuse green. I ended up smiling a crooked smile and semi-consciously keeping my head turned to the side, distressing Eric who was running sound and trying his darndest to adjust what was happening on my microphone.

What eventually happened, three oral surgeons later, is another discussion for another time. But the matter at hand was that I had several speaking and singing engagements and I was NOT going to order another of those $300 flippers. The thing was not only expensive but it felt like a piece of HiChew stuck to the roof of my mouth. It made me clip my syllables and choke on my own tongue.

“There’s got to be someone who can do temporary tooth better and cheaper than that!”

Enter "temporary tooth" in an internet search. 

A few clicks later I found the solution. Temp Tooth, (and probably fifty other similar products,) offers a perfectly suitable custom made fake tooth for a cool crisp 20 dollar bill, plus a little change. Within one day I was dropping tiny plastic beads in a mug of hot water. The beads turn clear and soft. Roll them into a little soft ball, put it in your blank tooth space, form it around the neighboring teeth, let it cool and turn white again, soak it in some tea if it’s too white, and voila… you’ve got yourself a tooth.

One little container has made me multiple teeth, because I lose them like I lost my flippers.

Today, when we picked-up six-year-old Tess from ballet class, she told us she lost another tooth. 
“I was so excited,” she said “cuz I wanted to put the tooth in one of those little teeny tiny animal boxes for the Tooth Fairy. But guess whaaaaaat?”

Tess has great comedic timing…

“I swallowed it eating a Taquito.”

(This is when having a grandma with too much stuff comes in handy.)

“Wanna make a fake one, Tess?”

That’s how I taught my tiniest grandchild how to make a fake tooth for the Tooth Fairy.

It takes me fifteen tiny beads to make my old lady tooth. Tess needed four.

It actually looked pretty real. Of course it doesn't need to fit in her mouth anymore.

I wonder if she’ll get away with it?

2024/6 LUMINARIES

Our beautiful friend Kari Jo Whitelock died. Today was the day her body returned to the earth. It rained, a soft and melancholy kind of drizzle.

Kari was a luminous soul, full of light, so much so that everyone who knew her said a room literally lit up when she entered. She was radiantly beautiful, outside and in. She took seriously her discipleship to Christ, so the glow was not only bright but also warm and comforting.

Kari Jo Whitelock

Just before dusk kids and grown-ups from our neighborhood scooped sand into white paper bags, then placed votive candles inside. We turned down the edges of the bags and loaded them into our van, driving them to the Whitelock home. I paused as we were setting the bags, watching people I love and who loved Kari bending in sacred silence to place these tokens of love a few feet apart from each other around the Whitelock home. They lined up like holy soldiers, little straight white bags, up the sidewalk and along the road, into the curved driveway, the stone walkway through the trees, and up the front steps. One by one we lit the candles until there were 100 glowing bags by the time the sun set. They flicker still, as I write. 

This is how our neighborhood whispers love to each other. We share light. It’s our Utah version of Pacific Islanders singing outside the homes of the deceased.

Before dark

After dark

For the last four decades our neighborhood has lit luminaries on Christmas Eve. When the kids were little we would do our dutiful parent prep after the kids were asleep, then drive around the neighborhood, usually around 3 am, our headlights turned off. If we were very lucky there would be a fresh falling snow. It felt like we lived in a snow globe, the houses of people we loved sitting dark and quiet behind flickering lights lining the streets. 

For the last few years we have started honoring those among us who die with these glowing lights. They are a soft enfolding of our love around our grieving friends. 

I am surprised how protective a thin paper bag can be, even in inclement weather. Even in the drizzle of this night Kari’s candles burn. Such a simple thing: a lunch sack, a small scoop of sand to add weight to the bag, and a humble mound of wax and wick. It works for hours. 

I am thinking tonight that we tend to complicate things too much. We try to make everything more efficient and more beautiful, and in the process make it more complex and difficult. Really all we need, sometimes, is something that will simply protect a little flame so it can fill the measure of its creation. Then, when it’s done, like Kari, the memory of the glow can sustain us.

Love lines the walkway

The Palmer home the night of Dee's funeral

 Annick and Randy the evening of their son Mark's funeral.

The Shill home after Danae's funeral

Danae had been Primary President in our church.
The kids colored her luminary bags.
"I wish I could blow you kisses every day."

2024/5 COUSINS

The night we all went to Johnny's LOVE LETTERS pop up museum in SLC.

Most of us store insta-memories on our cell phones. They are most easily found in the Photos app. I have an over-abundance of memories there. But I also have them in my Voice Memos. Way back ones. Hundreds of them. Bits of songs, song ideas, talks and stories and weird chords I don’t know how to name but can recognize by their sound. I can retrieve the sound of people I love who are gone now. I can even tell how my own voice is changing through the years. Technology can be awesome! Once I recorded common sounds around our house, like cupboard doors closing, water running at the kitchen sink, the doorbell ringing, the garage door shutting. I did this for Kate who lives in New York and was missing home. There’s also a grand recording of our large clan humming Christmas carols on kazoos after Thanksgiving dinner.

I have a snippet of what our house sounds like during Sunday family dinner. We gather here every other Sunday to feast on and with each other. It can get pretty chaotic. Our family circle stretches beyond bloodlines. Sometimes someone will come who is not used to a big family that is comfortable with each other and also comfortable with chaos. I find the cacophony beautiful, to the point that I pressed record on my phone so I could keep it.

The source of most of that noise, besides multiple conversations at one of at least three dinner tables (we usually have between 25 and 35 people) is the enthusiasm of young cousins when they see each other. Frankly I cook, clean, set tables, do dishes and laundry for these dinners mostly because I want those cousins to have, somewhere deep in their memory banks, a place where they felt the warmth, candor and creative safety of each other. 

Cousins opening pjs and Nerf guns the Sunday before Christmas

My own cousins were pivotal in my life. My mom was the tenth of eleven children (Fred, Parks, Ruth, Ruby, Edna, Mary, Mae, Afton, Becky - (and Daniel and Marion who both passed away in childhood). I was next-to-the-youngest of the next-to-the-youngest and there were no cousins my age, but my Aunt Becky had a whole passel of kids close to my age and they became my safe place. Our trips to Idaho in the summer ended up most happily at their little house in Ucon. Their family already filled that house to bulging, but My Aunt Becky and Uncle Richard shifted everyone over to make room for us. I’ve never slept so happily on the floor or a couch. It was the sleep of home, the kind of home that was a feeling rather than a place.

I’ve noticed that time does interesting things in blood relationships. Cousins go through the funk of teenage compartmentalization. Some cousins stop their intimate conversations. The same kids who played pretend wholeheartedly together as littles end up eating dinner rather silently beside each other. Its kind of heartbreaking for a grandma. But then I’ve seen the beautiful unfolding of age, when the social blinds are lifted, the muscle memory kicks in and the heart returns home. My own kids find delight and comfort in their cousins who are also adults now. It makes my heart so happy.

Annie and her cousin Lauren reunite as adults.

Last summer Dave’s cousins, whom we see during our cottage visits in Michigan, told about the time the boy cousins were playing on the third floor of the Mackinac Island cottage. The girls were playing on the second story balcony (this was a magnificently large Victorian cottage on the west bluff of Mackinac Island).  Apparently the boys, in their eternal quest to tease the girls, stuffed some of cousin Roy’s clothing and threw the dummy over the balcony. The girls, terrorized at the thought of their cousin falling to his death, ran screaming down the staircase, stunning Grandma and Grandpa. The boys had a good old laugh about it, and in the process sealed both their relationships with each other, and frankly sealed the girls' relationships together as well. Shared shenanigans will do that.

Grandma & Grandpa Roy
at the Mackinac Island cottage.
that top balcony to the left is 
where the boys threw "Roy" over.

This fall my cousin Gail had some of us up to her cabin near the Teton mountains. It was beautiful in every way; fishing, mountain air, guitars ringing into the night, games and meals and old photos and stories retold. It felt like our moms were pulling threads from Heaven and cinching us together repeatedly. Goodness, I love my cousins.

A collection of Miskin and Hansen cousins.

As tired as I am Sunday night, after cooking dinner for the masses, setting and serving, running the dishwasher twice and rearranging the furniture back into a family room, I love our Sunday gatherings. I would gladly run myself ragged just to know I might one day peek over the edge of Heaven and see my posterity retelling family stories or playing kazoos in unison after an autumnal feast.

Connors cousins with their Auntie Kate.
(At John's Love Letters museum)

2024/4. CONTENTEDLY CONFUSED

I had just filled the washing machine with a load of laundry when six-year-old Tess tapped my back.

“Gummy, I’m confused.”

I waited for her to finish her sentence, but she didn’t.

“What are you confused about?”

“Why is it tree?” she asked.

“Why is what tree?”

She looked into the space to the side of us, searching for something that I guess wasn’t there.

“Why do they call it tree?”

I scanned the room looking for something that might resemble a tree.

“I don’t see a tree, Tess.”

“No,” she went on, “why do they call a tree a tree? I mean, who made up that word? Who made up all the words anyway? There must have been a time when there was a tree without a word to name it. Who gave it that name?”

I don’t know the answer to that, Tessy. But I can tell you I have had the same kind of questions. I’m sure there is an answer somewhere, in some realm unavailable to us. 

Tess feels like the me I used to know. I get her. I delight in her and ache for her at the same time. There are just so many unanswerable questions. But it feels really validating that someone else has the same unanswerable questions as you. And I have had enough experience to believe that, while I can’t give her an answer, I can sit in the question with her, our knees curled up to our chests, our hands wrapped around our bony shins, planted on the porch of humanness together in silence, or bouncing related questions back and forth to each other until we are both satisfied that we have properly addressed the universe and now we can move on to playing something else.

Sometimes the best thing we can do for each other is be contentedly confused together.

After you're done being confused
you find a set of butterfly wings and pretend.

2024/3 BUDDY TAPE

A couple weeks ago I slammed my toe into a large box of laundry soap when I was rushing to get into the shower. The toe ended up perpendicular to the rest of my toes. It looked pretty surreal. Knowing it was probably out of alignment I quickly pulled it up out of the socket and back into place. A short shower later I hobbled out to the freezer, grabbed a bag of frozen vegetables and planted my poor foot up above my heart wrapped in a bag of frozen corn. It’s been hurting ever since. So yesterday I finally went to get it checked out because it was still swollen, bruised and hurt like heck. I just wanted to be sure that it wasn’t healing out of alignment. Turns out it is broken and its situated correctly to do its healing. All I need to do, besides take care of it, is tape it to the healthy toes next to it. Actually, these days they use a dandy little Velcro thingymabobber.

So, this morning I am thinking about how grateful I am that there is a healthy toe or two next to my broken one. And, because pretty much everything is symbolic, I am also thinking about the people in my life who allow me to buddy tape myself to them when I need to heal. 

I’ve noticed that the healthy toes get a bit irritated at the closeness. Still, they let themselves be the steady. Gosh, I’m grateful for a few healthy toes. 

And I sure feel blessed by more than a few healthy people who hold me close when I need them.

2024/2. TEXTS

Years ago, when we were on the cusp of having smart phones, when our flip phones were starting to be relegated to the junk drawer or the toy box, this new thing called texting changed our world. At first texts were cryptic short messages. We had to click on numbers on our phones, pressing the number repeatedly to represent a letter in the alphabet. It took focus and time to work through creating a text. It was the morse code version of modern-day cell phones.

Then phones lost their flip and got keypads for texting at relative super speed. The problem was those texts cost ten cents each. Each little block of conversation. That was around the time when our youngest, Annie, was getting to know a fellow named Jordon. We got a phone bill one month that included $300 in text charges. Apparently, they decided to let their fingers do the talking. I consider it an investment, since she eventually married Jordon and they have produced three of my favorite little humans. Fortunately we don’t have to pay per text anymore.

These days people prefer a text over a phone call. We are regressing as social beings. But that’s another conversation for another time.

Every once in a while I take a screen shot of a text exchange, usually when it tickles my funny bone.

So, for old time’s sake, here are just a few I saved on my phone:

A message to the woman who was
selling something on Facebook Marketplace

... her response.

This beats the time I was told I looked like
John Goodman.

Libby's been hearing my weird dreams her whole life. :-)

Texting the ward council group from England...

...Derek Snow's reply.

From my old friend Nadine.

Suz expects me to keep the fudge Sarah and Anna made
so she can pick it up when she gets home.

... and my newest and current favorite text:

LENT 2024/1. FLAME

When a day ends in relative calm and I am able to amble to bed peacefully, there's a little ritual I follow. Part of that bedtime ritual is to turn out the lights in our bathroom and strike a match. I do this as an homage to my mother, who was a fan of matches as room air fresheners, and also a lover of nature and a good campfire. The aesthetic of striking a wooden match and hearing the melodic punch of flame igniting, the visual burst from darkness to light, the flicker and dance of a moving light whose skirt floats around her in a spectrum of color… so much happens in an instant. I embark on an aromatic time travel that changes me into a child standing next to my mother. I remember watching her stare at the flame, her hand drifting back and forth moving it like a puppet, the flame trying to catch up with the pattern of her motion. Then, just before the fire reached her fingertips, having spent most of its fuel, she pursed her lips and the breath of her humanness blew out the flame. Each night I follow this remembered routine. I am transfixed very quickly and rather completely for a whole 10 seconds. After the flame is gone, I stir my hand with the blackened stick facing heavenward and watch the smoke rise and dissipate in a weightless vortex. There is a convergence of memory that includes years of campfire singing, the burning of the neighbor’s fields in autumn, the incinerator flaming with dried leaves in our back yard back in Pittsburgh, a beeswax candle at Christmas and paraffin melting onto every birthday cake. There is the reminiscent hint of my mother’s perfume mixed with bath soap accompanying the sulfur and carbon ignited in her small bathroom on East Bruceton Road. I feel her with me every night. It eases my soul.

Last night, knowing today began my Lenten journey of writing purposefully every day, I tried to capture the moment with my cell phone camera. 

Snapshot taken, routine completed, teeth brushed, prayers said, blankets pulled up over my shoulder, I laid on my side and reviewed the photo. What I intended to be a picture of a flame ended up capturing the image of the Washington DC temple behind the match, and with the light of the flame, a reflection of myself superimposed over the temple. 

Dave had given me that framed photo of the DC temple on our anniversary one year. We were married in that place four children and eleven grandchildren ago. “We should have a picture of our temple in our house,” he said. It’s not fine art, this photograph. It’s a typical realistic image without any “give” for interpretation. So I relegated it to our bathroom. Its viewed more often there anyway.

I don’t know if its my neurodivergent brain, or my off-kilter heart, or what… but I am not wholly at ease with all aspects of my religion, including temple worship and patterns. I wish this were not so, because it would be easier to live a life without serious questions. Nonetheless, I have them. To clarify, I don’t NOT believe. I honor my covenants. I am not one to throw the baby out with the bath water. I just don’t “get” what it all means, and the not getting it feels like it’s getting in the way of the faith part. I have to keep reminding myself that faith by nature is supposed to lay in a bed of ignorance, the same way one cannot have real courage if they don’t also have fear. 

I know love is the first and foremost. It is all encompassing. But something in me says there is more than just feeling and emitting love. If the feeling of love was all that is required would Jesus not have been able to die an old man surrounded by his loved ones? I need more information! It's gonna take some journeying to get it. Its gonna take some willingness to not understand everything but still trust it is well sourced.

This accidental photo spoke to me that while I may not have complete clarity about divinity, I still see myself reflected in divine images. And that flame, however short lived and small it may be, is enough light to keep me engaged and present. I might see the spent fuel of my faith swirling into darkness… but I can also continue to light matches. I put my feet in holy places. I whisper daily in the name of my Christ, willing to live with a measure of discomfort as I grow. I seek guidance from trusted sources and engage in my partnership with the Holy Ghost. Walking the walk of a believer calms my spirit. I repeat remembered testaments that brought me to being a believer in the first place. Most of all I fight to maintain my desire to believe. That desire burns within me, sometimes in maintenance mode, waiting until the fire is large and crackling hot and unquenchable. Trusting this, I keep striking little matches every day. Fire renewed, one small flame at a time. 

So, Mom, I will keep striking matches daily, to keep you with me, and to keep Him with me as well.

SALLY JO WINEBRENNER - A TRUE & FAITHFUL FRIEND

I paused at the window to peek out at the sweeping landscape and woody hillsides across the courtyard.

“Do these people really live here?” I thought to myself. 

The home reminded me of Dave’s grandparent’s 13 bedroom cottage on Mackinac Island MI. We had spent our honeymoon there, on the west bluff of the island just up from the historic Grand Hotel. It was a fairy-tale place for a honeymoon. Rather unreal. Now here I was in New York, feeling those familiar hints of overwhelming historic charm.

We had just recently moved to upstate New York, where my husband, fresh out of law school, would serve a year-long clerkship for the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Ellsworth Van Graafeiland had selected Dave as one of his clerks (the other clerk, incidentally, was Jay Powell, who is currently the Chair of the US Federal Reserve). While the Second Circuit Court heard cases in New York City, the Judge’s chambers were in Rochester. We were fortunate enough to rent a home in a quaint little Rochester suburb called Pittsford. I was twenty-one years old and pregnant with my second child. On this particular late summer evening the ladies’ organization in our church had an activity which included a tour of the home of Sally Jo Winebrenner. I knew no one there, quite literally, but mustered the courage to go in an effort to try to change that.

Sally Jo and Bob Winebrenner had opened the doors to their remarkable home with such grace and elan that even this newcomer girl bulging with baby felt like a well-seeded cherished old friend. The home was not only immaculate it dripped beauty and charm from every nook and crevice. That fateful day was life changing to me, not because of the place, though we are constantly changed by the beauty we encounter. I was unaware at the moment that the voice of Sally Jo Winebrenner would be an eternal source of comfort, guidance and confidence for me. It echoes in my head still and triggers my heart all these decades later.

 

I have since tried to evaluate why this particular woman was so pivotal in my life. We have remained friends since that one shared year in upstate New York. My current thinking is that I was new to adulthood and independence. Married young, and anxious to jump into motherhood before I had really grown into a functional adult (sorry kids), this journey to New York was an awakening. Dave was gone to Manhattan one week of each month when the judge heard cases. And during the three weeks he remained in Rochester the judge liked his clerks to be in the office until 7 pm, so my helpmeet was gone, with our only car, all day and into the late evening. I lived in an unfamiliar house in an unknown place with a baby and another on the way. My mom was in Pittsburgh and siblings all lived in other states. Looking back on it I feel a tender compassion for that girl who was me four decades ago.

Enter God, and his instrument, Sally Jo Winebrenner. Within a few weeks the bishop of our congregation called me to be a counselor in the church Young Women’s organization. Sally Jo was president. She has asked for me as a counselor. Don’t you think it rather risky to ask for a gal still wet behind the ears to teach and nurture girls who were just a handful of years younger than her? Sal was an adventurous gal. I should have known that by looking at the spaces she and Bobby took on as designers, renovators and decorators. Still, I suppose I had enough sense of self to accept the job and not wither under the emotional weight. Sally Jo never once indicated any worry about my abilities. She whispered confidence in everything we did, in everything she said. At least this is my memory of it. I was not her child, and she did not make me feel like a child. She had this magical way of making me feel like an equal. I have tried to emulate that in my own interactions with people younger and older than I am. I’ve since served as president of young and old women’s organizations in our church and how I serve in those capacities is based on how I observed her. 

Sally Jo and Bob in the era when we first met.

Bob and Sally Jo stretched their discipleship well beyond their church involvement. There is an indelible portrait in my personal history, stuck in my head and not in a photo album, that I am pretty certain will be played in that virtual life-film people talk about being shown to us when we die. It’s a warm spring evening and we are on the lawn at High Point, the same house where I first met Sally Jo. She and Bob have swung open the doors again. The Aherns, and others who shared the Winebrenners’ heart-space, are there. We sit out on the plush lawn, a refreshingly wet New York breeze flowing over my skin. Sally Jo walks out and places a guitar in my lap. “Sing for us” she says, as she scoots a lawn chair over close to me. This singular act represents who she is to me. She is the sort of soul who basks joyfully in the light of others, unaware that so often what she thinks is “their light” is mostly a reflection of her own. And her light, frankly, is a reflection of her God’s. She does love her God! 

In recent years Sally Jo has used the internet to offer bits of
hope, faith and encouragement on social media.

When we finished our stint in New York Bob and Sally Jo had another gathering at High Point and honored us with hand bound journals. Dick Ahern had wrapped them so beautifully we didn’t want to unwrap them. That journal is completely filled with life moments from the subsequent years. I look at its cover and feel that sort of melancholy happy/sad tugging at my heart, returning to the moment when it was fresh and new. And yet grateful for the experiences that have filled its pages. Sal and Bob always knew the perfect token of love to give someone.

The young Winebrenner family.

Winebrenner kids... lovely people, every one!

We moved back to Pittsburgh, and then to Utah. In those decades since we parted our paths have crossed intermittently; an afternoon tea at my mother’s place, a meeting for birthday lunch (our birthdays are in the same week of March). Sally Jo had me come to Pasadena CA to sing for her ladies group or her Relief Society, or maybe both, I don’t recall that detail, though I do recall the women and their marvelous dynamic. And I remember gathering red peppercorn twigs from her lawn. I put them in the garland coming down one of my staircases at Christmastime. I recall the lovely details of their various homes where we visited, in Pasadena, and on Mitchell Street in Pittsford, and then (lucky us) in Provo Utah when they finally bit the dust and left their beloved hometown of Pittsford just to be closer to their children and grands. Little cherished details like a fresh vase of peonies on the bedside table, down filled easy chairs and tiny silver frames on a lace tablecloth filed with cherished faces and places. I have a collection of very old finger sized sheep, Putz and carved and wooly… all different, gathered around a small manger at Christmastime. Sally Jo has a similar flock at her house at Christmastime, each lamb representing a member of her posterity. So much of Sally Jo is what I want to be part of Cori. Kindred hearts, I think. Like Dianna and Anne of Green Gables; bosom friends. 

Of course, there is so much that I have not acquired that I admire about her. I will never, with this neurodivergent mind of mine, have the gift of tidiness and completing tasks that she has. I dream of being as grounded and faithful as she. Everyone needs someone to look up to that doesn’t make you feel like its unattainable. Sally and I do share a romantic heart, and an unquenchable thirst for all things sentimental. That, and the fact that she has her Bob as I have my Dave. We do share the emotional safety of being loved and loving someone true and steady. We both acknowledge this as a rare gift.

Most people will say I should be writing in past tense about her, because this week our Sally Jo leapt into the arms of her Lord, and then immediately into the enfolding arms of her Bobby, somewhere in a Heaven-space. The only thing that softens the blow of the loss of her is picturing that reunion. I imagine the two of them setting to work beautifying Heaven. It was a double loss when Bob Winebrenner died a couple long years ago. Especially for his family. We who love him had our own personal grief for him being gone from sight, but we also had the vicarious sorrow at the separation of him and Sally Jo. We ached for her. She handled the separation with the same apparent grace she evidenced when I first met her at High Point. She certainly was grace personified! But I also know her heart, and imagine her pillow wet with quiet tears. We are just so delighted with our faith that the two of them are in each other’s arms once more.

Not knowing the effect of time or space that will be part of the next realm, I am only projecting my imagination on what she might be doing right now, but I do hope she will find my mom up there and give her a hug and share a bit of laughter. I have every confidence that there will come a time, in some other realm beyond our view, when Bob and Sally Jo Winebrenner will throw open some heavenly door and welcome us into a divine, radiant and holy space beautified by their presence. 

Please, God, make it so.

They make wherever they are feel like home.

Family.

Building faith, one generation at a time.

Turning work into play.

Home is wherever Grammie is.

https://www.bergmortuary.com/obituaries/Sally-Jo-Winebrenner/#!/TributeWall