AUGUST 9TH....

I've been thinking a lot about my mother today.  My brother Harold was killed in a rabbit hunting accident on this day in 1948.  I wasn't quite three years old, so the memories I have are more than likely collaged from comments and event- telling from a variety of sources over the years. 

When my dad died in August 1984 while we were living in Berlin, I returned to the United States by myself to attend his funeral.  It was Dale Hamblin's job to drive me from Rawlins to Denver in order to fly back to Germany.  I got "brave" and asked him to tell me what happened that sad day almost 40 years before that.  What he told me gave me a clearer picture of what really happened and a sense of his deep love and concern for my family as he was there with Harold when he was accidentally shot. 

But it is my mother I think about now.  When Jeremy died, I so wished my mother were still alive (she had died three years previously) so I could ask her some of those nagging questions that blanketed my mind for weeks and weeks about HOW life could ever seem normal again.

Looking back, it seemed like maybe it wasn't something my mother wanted to talk about--my brother's death.  She didn't often bring it up.  But, I'll bet she would have given anything for someone to ask her how she managed to live through the loss of a child, a seeming impossibility to anyone who hasn't entered that sad circle of parents who have lost a child to death. 

There was a box of Harold's things under my mother's bed.  Now and then I would see her take out Harold's Sunday suit or some other item and just hold it lovingly in her hands.  I would back quietly out of her room, almost afraid to say anything.  But I now think she would have loved to talk about Harold and the few little articles that remained of his life.

Harold's Lionel train set was there, too.  When my own little boys were at an age sufficient to play with trains, my parents brought it to them.  But, it was old and not sleek like the train sets in the 1970's. I wanted my boys to have new stuff.  So I didn't respect that gesture and left the set in a box down the basement until it finally disappeared, to where I do not know. I have regreted my limited expanse of understanding of that time and now would embrace it as something special.

I have thought of my mother's experience, and I wish I had been more perceptive--but I was a child and the youngest.  Just didn't occur to me to remember my mother on Harold's birthday or recall his life on the anniversary of his death.  (I'm sure Lois did, though, as she was always thoughtful that way and still put flowers on Harold's grave long after my parents died.)I know now those are very important days for the mother of a child who has died.  So, I doubly appreciate when any of you contact me on April 2nd or on the 17th or 18th of July each year.  It makes a bond of family remembrance which is important in keeping our family focused on the "forever" part.

Perhaps most of all I think about my mother probably NOT having a friend to her like Rosalie Hall was to me.  That is not to say Church members, neighbors, even townspeople were not solicitous and caring to the Huggins Family during that painful time of Harold's death and beyond.  But it was the constantcy of Rosalie's friendship and love during those awful, awful days, weeks, and months after Jeremy died that qualify her--on that compassionate dedication alone--for an exalted position in the world to come.  I don't think my mother had anyone intimate to her life like that who would have listened to an aching heart, a grieving soul, and a hunger to just know all would be well--and responded to her, as Rosalie unfailingly did to me, with the loving words:  "I care how you feel."  Rosalie knew there was nothing she could do to change things, but that love--true Christ-like charity--could salve a weeping mother's heart.  And it did.

How I wish that I could have eased my mother's aching heart by just asking about Harold or letting her know I cared that her missing him was bone-deep.  Even years later.  Compassion came for me much beyond  her life on earth.  It will be one of the first things I express to her when I see her again:  "Forgive me for being care-less." 


And she will.

     Harold, Mom, and Georgia, who is sitting in the basket of Harold's bike.  Maybe 1947. No date on the photo. This is in the backyard of our home in Rawlins, Wyoming.