Letters From "Bamma"

"Train up a child in the way that he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. " - Proverbs 22:6


My mother-in-law, Carol, used to write little notes to Anthony when he was an infant. She wrote one in the "Baby's First Bible" she bought him when he was still in diapers, and a few more, here or there, over the years in other books or on scraps of paper she would put in his lunch box before she would walk him to school the next day. That she did this was very sweet. That she did this while she was slowly dying of breast cancer is profound.

Earlier this week I blogged about the sudden and unexpected death of a sports journalist I never knew and the futility this seemed to convey in how we all live our lives not knowing our ends.  I went home that night to find a letter, typed and framed, from Carol to Anthony. It was the scripture she had prayed over him every day of his infancy as he clung to life, eleven weeks premature into this world, at just over three pounds. The scripture? Psalm 139:13-16. At the bottom of the letter she wrote a few words in her own hand, as if to stamp it personally and formally, as if to say "I read this. I attest to it. It is factual."

I sat down in our living room holding her letter and I was humbled. Some of us do know our own ends and some of us make the most out of them. For some people that's skydiving and bull riding I guess (or so that song goes). For Carol it was about doing all she could to pass the Word of God on to her grandson, to train him in it, rear him in it, bathe him in it.  In so doing she made her death a thing about life. The life of another human being. A life she would never see grow past the age of six. I thought to myself, "What brave foresight."

Then I found out today that there are notes left behind for Sophia too, as she grows and reaches certain ages. Notes for a little baby that was only months old when Carol died.