by Martha Sterne

"And so completion. Full circle. What all of us want for ourselves and for people we love. The fullness of time and pace and laughter in the golden hours at the end of a long, full day."

My husband’s mother died early, early on a spring morning a few months ago. She was 90 years old, and she died in her sleep in her own bed at peace with her children and ready and eager to go to Jesus and the crowd of family and friends who had left her behind. Pretty wonderful, and who would ask for more?

Helen Hopkins Sterne had a lucky life. By the way, I would have never called her Helen to her face; I called her Mrs. Sterne for years, for she and my father–in–law were most comfortable on a last–name basis. Then after 10 or 15 years or so in the family, I just starting saying "hey!" or whatever without using her name. Or I called her Granny, which is what our children called her.

She was born into an old Atlanta family with some money. Her father had a drinking problem and never worked a day in his life. But he got off the sauce eventually, and not to have worked for a living in his day and among his crowd was not unusual.

Except for the war years, my mother-in-law lived in a graceful neighborhood of beautiful homes and green lawns. She married a trustworthy, steady man who became a respected banker and civic leader. She had all she wanted, but she never lived extravagantly. And she enjoyed extraordinary health and lots of laughter. She birthed five children who, to date, have held down jobs and kept mates and managed to stay out of jail. (Okay, there was that night in the Dacula, Georgia, jail after a Georgia football game but we wuz framed.)

Imperfect in the detail
Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren adored her. Usually.

Many mornings she walked across Peachtree Road to the 7:30 Mass at the Cathedral of Christ the King. Her faith was something she didn’t talk much about. She just did the Mass and trusted that God and the priests would work out the rest.

She was both very generous in deed and occasionally very cruel in words. I stayed pretty much away from her because I don’t know how to take the kind of kidding she dished out, but I noticed that I was happy to spend the money she gave us or to be associated with her generosity to causes around town.

After her husband died in 1987, she tried to become the ruling matriarch of the family. Briefly. I think she made her power play out of genuine anxiety that with him gone, somebody needed to take the helm. For instance, she told me to quit seminary because it was "abnormal," and she told my husband he was abnormal, too, for letting me go to seminary. We basically all said "yeah, yeah," and just kept on with our lives. She gave up her attempts at leadership of the clan after a few months, and that was good.

She said things that would make your blood curdle. Negative stuff. However, from the ’60s on, coming from a world in which the only people of color she knew were servants, she followed her husband right into the heart of the desegregation of Atlanta, supporting his development of an integrated circle of city leaders.

She talked a lot about the horrible things that happened in the world–murders and crashes and so forth. She really did have kind of an addiction to negativity. I never could tell whether she worried about terrible events or enjoyed the thrill of catastrophe —probably some combination of both. She did love the sound of fire engines.

She had a couple of false starts on dying. She had some dizzy spells, probably little strokes, and she had a drug reaction when, during a bout of insomnia, she took all the pills that anyone had ever prescribed for her for anxiety or as a sleep aid. But after going into the hospital and getting de–toxed, she was back better than new.

Then she broke her hip last winter and she was convinced that this was the end. She laid on the little emergency–room gurney and shut her eyes and folded her arms over her chest and said, "I’m going home to my sweetheart." Her doctor who was also her great-nephew, said, "Aunt Helen, actually you are doing great," and she was disgusted with that. But she did do really well, and she was walking like a champ in a few weeks.

The lions and lambs celebrate life
Then she died. In her sleep. At peace. Happy mostly. A charmed life, mostly. Ninety years old. Really, what more could you ask for?

We put in the paper for people to come to her place on Sunday night to greet the five children before the funeral on Monday. A platoon of cousins marshaled themselves and brought everything wonderful to eat in the world, including some recipes out of the Mississippi Delta funeral cookbook entitled Being Dead Is No Excuse, which offers fabulous fare.

Our huge extended family had been somewhat rent asunder by the blessing of the same–gender union of a universally dearly beloved young cousin. Some branches were united in support, and some branches were united against, and there was a lot of pain. Well, we just forgot all that and the lions and the lambs scurried around setting out tenderloin biscuits and stuffed eggs and fruit bowls and gorgeous cheeses and beautiful cakes and more, because our family needed a big old beautiful feast. And so everybody forgot all their theologies because you know the end of the day, what matters is our relatedness, not our opinions, and what matters is gathering together and thanking God for life, not telling each other what God thinks. For truly, God will be who God will be, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts no matter how right we think we are. And at important moments, thank God, we all know that.

And so after a gorgeous day, the sun was going down and the light became golden and clear like it does in the spring, and we were up in her apartment on the 27^th floor floating in the crystal air. Looking out the glass wall of windows, you could see the beginnings of the spine of the Appalachian Mountains rising 60 miles away to the north and the cars were streaming like a river on Peachtree Road down below.

Legendary character
And the people poured in–every age, every stage, every sort, every condition. For it is true, Helen Sterne was a legendary character. And there they came — cherishing their memories and looking for their circles of friends and looking for the bar. Our children were the bartenders, and they deserve the medal of honor because at an old lady’s wake in that crowd, whew.

Every once in a while you’d hear a cry of joy and see an embrace of people who had just lost each other in time and in the space of that big city. My mother–in–law would have loved every second of the party. And then when it was over she would have collapsed into a big, soft, chintz–covered chair in the living room and she would have kicked off her shoes and said, "Oh Lord, my dogs are barking," and she would have led the laughter as the family remembered this and that.

Unanswered questions
That same weekend, about two or three miles away, another crowd gathered. This one gathered very early in the morning in unfathomable shock and pain. A bus filled with a baseball team of Mennonite college students was heading down I–75 to Florida and the driver thought he was in the through lane but he had gotten onto an exit ramp and the bus just went up the exit and up and up and over the guard rail and it fell back down on the expressway on its side like a huge, wounded bird.

Six dead in the flash and crash of a moment. Now seven. Young bodies torn to shreds. The captain of the team, the class clown, the bus driver, his wife who just wanted to get out of the Ohio cold and spend a few days in the sun. Out of nowhere. In the dark of the early morning–lives lost not in the fullness of time, not with peace and laughter in the golden hours at the end of the day. Lives just lost and the waves of grief rolled up that expressway for a thousand miles and will circle out in the lives of the survivors for as long as they live.

And that is so confusing and terrifying for us. Why does stuff like that happen? People asked Jesus that all the time. Why did God let Pilate murder those particular people? Were they worse than us? And why did the tower fall on these other people and not somebody else? Were they worse sinners?

Now I wish I could understand and find peace and comfort when I think about one person living to 90 in peace and plenty and others falling off an expressway bridge and dying in chaos and pain before they even got out of school. That just makes no sense. And nobody, not even Jesus, answers the question.

We just don’t know the answer to all that. But we believe that God is the answer. And that God loves us steadfastly. And that our death, the end of our little days–be they long and peaceful or turbulent and cut off – is not the end of us, which I believe is why Jesus often just refused to act like the end of our little days was all that important. He dilly–dallied around for two or three days before he went to see his dying, then dead friend Lazarus. Jesus just does not focus on the end. Instead, I think Jesus saw and pointed beyond our little days all the way to a golden circle and peace and laughter, and that Jesus is our way there and our truth along the way and our life into eternity.

Family circle
For as my mother–in–law knew, and as all those young men either knew or know now, our life is in God–endless and golden and catastrophe–free and full of laughter forever. I picture them having met by now–my mother–in–law and the Mennonite boys. She loosens them up and has them eating out of the palm of her hand, laughing and carrying on. They call her Helen and they call my father–in–law Billy, and they tell her don’t be such a snob and they kid her out of her addiction to negativity. They love each other–the Mennonite boys and my mother–in-law–and all the people they love who had already gone on before. And they go from strength to strength, dancing ever closer, ever deeper into the ever-widening family circle in the golden light at the heart of God.