The Returning
How memorialize 89 years of life?
Barbara died in December. It is now April and my daughter Kimberly and I depart Minneapolis and travel east on a mission―to carry Barbara’s ashes back to Willow Street Mennonite, her childhood church, founded in 1710. It feels so right to bring Barbara full circle back to the place where she grew up immersed in her family’s dairy farm and in this Mennonite community surrounded by relatives and friends in beautiful Lancaster County., Pennsylvania.
This year spring has come early to Lancaster County—green meadows of alfalfa, new-leaved trees, gardens of tulips, daffodils and phlox. the faint smell of spread manure, We pass eternal stone barns with their earth bridges rising to the second level. We hear the clip-clop of passing grey and black buggies.
Fifty-four years ago I traveled from Venezuela to Lancaster County for our wedding. I learned to see this world through her eyes―now I love the place even more than she did but I’m tearing up as I arrive for the first time without Barbara.
We find Willow Street Mennonite Church thriving—lots of young families and children, with many of Barbara’s relatives sprinkled in. Even as we memorialize life’s ending, their Sunday Easter service promises new life. I enjoying hearing again the “Lancaster lilt”—”youse staying for dinner? . . . it spited me . . . outen the light . . . there’s more pie back . . . baby’s all cried up; maybe she needs drying . . .”
On Saturday, thirty people gather for Barbara’s memorial service. Joe Sherer, Willow Street minister, uses Barbara’s memoirs book to enrichen his remarks. I am humbled that Allen and Rachel (Groffdale horse-and-buggy Mennonites) have come, along with David and Sarah Lapp, the Amish couple who now farm the old Breneman farmstead. Both couples had to find car transportation.
I am blessed that all our children are here. Jeny has flown in from northern California and speaks of her childhood in the Hurd family. Son Timothy shares remembrances. When I rise to speak, I stand mute for several moments. Then, “Each life is sacred to God. Thus, it is fitting that we meet today to celebrate the life and faith of Barbara Ann Hurd Breneman. . . . When we moved to Colombia she comforted me after an airplane crash, nursed me through a bout of Typhoid fever. . . . Barbara was the beating heart of our home. Always loyal to her husband, a sacrificial wife and mother. She fiercely fostered our social, emotional and spiritual development. . . .”
The service complete, I retrieve the urn and lead the way out to the graveyard. In this cemetery lie Barbara’s parents, grandparents and other relatives. Don Breneman, who mows the graveyard; says there are 2200 stones. I apologize for giving him another one to mow around. I lower the brown wooden urn into the ground. We pray, leave flowers, then depart.
I feel at peace; feel that we helped Barbara circle back home to the place that formed her, the place where she now rests in the plot that awaits my future arrival. Sadness overwhelms me but even more, gratitude—for Barbara’s life; her blessed death; her great gifts to me, our family, our community and our world. I take comfort in our Lord’s words, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
May eternal light shine upon her.