Summer, 2007

Text Box: This summer will be forever stamped with one event: the death of my mother.    Vicki had joined me in Korea on June 9 to spend two weeks with me touring the country.   On the fourth day, Vicki and I were staying in a condo on the East Coast.   We had been out of pocket for at least a day, away from Seoul, and away from phone communication.   Before leaving the condo on the morning of June 13, I decided to check my e-mail on the clerk's computer.  At once several messages popped up, urging me to phone home immediately.   My mind raced ahead, trying not to agree to the unimaginable.   At the same time as I was dialing my parents' number in the States, Vicki was checking her own e-mail.   Even before the line connected, Vicki was reading her messages.  I heard her gasp.  I then looked down at her messages, several of which read, "We are so sorry to hear about the death of Don's mom."  A tractor trailer had just plowed into me.  I felt like collapsing, but continued with the call, standing, but shaking from head to toe.   My sister Sharon answered the phone.  I said, "I just got several messages to phone home."  Sharon struggled with her words, "Mother...passed away... this morning."  "But," I said, "she was home and recovering and doing well.  What happened?"  As more details became known in the days ahead, we feel like her heart had been too weak to accept the surgery of 10 days earlier.   Mother had agreed to have heart surgery after some tests had showed a defective valve and possible blockage in one artery.   Her doctor had said that it was possible to put the procedure off, but there would be the risk of a serious heart attack later or even a stroke.  All of us had encouraged her to do the surgery and we enlisted the prayers of many around the world.  The first report by the surgeon following the surgery was "excellent."  All of us were relieved.   They had replaced a defective heart valve, repaired another, did a single by-pass, and a heart cauterization.  This was a little more than we had expected, but certainly common procedure these days.   After staying in the hospital a few extra days, due to fluid build-up, she was released and allowed to recover at home.  Then, at home on the morning of June 12, at 9:15 a.m., Rosemary Kinder went to be with the Father.  Her heart just somehow gave out, or as my father later said, "She gave it away."  Other people were always on her mind.  The quilts that would later lay across the bottom of her casket were a beautiful symbol of the innumerable quilts and other gifts she had made for others through the years.   At the time of her death, she had even been working on 4 small quilts to give to members at church who were expecting babies in the upcoming year.  Vicki and I traveled back to Maryland as quickly as we could.   Our friend, Sang Young Yang, who had driven us to the Coast, and then back to Seoul, made all the changed airline arrangements by phone as he drove the 3 hours back to the capital city.   We flew out the next morning, and arrived in Baltimore on June 14.   Arrangements had already been made for the funeral service to be held that Saturday at the Eastside Church of Christ, where my mother had been a faithful member for many years, and had taught the small children the Bible every Sunday morning. Whoever had made up the funeral program had put my name on the schedule, calling my part, "Memories of Mother."  I was very surprised to see my name there; yet, at the same time, felt great honor and pride to be asked to say something.   What follows below is the text of what I said on the morning of June 16 at the funeral.  Speaking that morning was the most difficult public message I have ever given, and maybe the one that I now value the most.  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  - MEMORIES OF MOTHER June 16, 2007  First, from the family.   We just thank all of you so much for the love and support you have given us during our time of supreme need.  We cannot express with words how much we deeply appreciate and love all of you.  Last night, we experienced such a flood of love, expressed for us, and for our father, because of the love you have for my mother.   When I got back from Korea 2 days ago, and first saw that my name was on the program, inside I went, “O boy, what are they asking me to do? What can I possibly say to honor such a woman as my mother?  Will I be able to even do it?”   At the same time, I feel extremely honored to do this.   It is the most difficult and most easy thing I have ever had to do.   To talk about this godly Christian woman is easy to do.  So easy to recall so many good memories.  But then to say goodbye to my mother is the most difficult thing I have had to do.   All of us thought we would enjoy her for many years to come.   Not one of us expected it to be so sudden, so soon.   We were not prepared.    Mother, you caught us off guard.    Yesterday, I asked each of my brothers and sister to write down the favorite memory of mother, and I would read those today.  Here are some of their thoughts.  My best memory of mother: “One time her car door was struck by another car (down in Louisiana).  The man who hit her said he would pay for the repairing the car door and replace the cracked glass.  Mother said, “Don’t worry about the glass.  It was already cracked.”                                                            -  Jimmie (son) My favorite memories of mother are: That she was always concerned about others, she had the patience of Gold, Sunday dinners – green beans and cole slaw.  She loved carnations.   The best mother God could give anyone”                            - Sharon (daughter) My favorite memories of mother are: “Mother, when I think of you, I remember the warmth of your eyes, and the beauty that blooms like a rose every time you smile. A collector of all things “Coke.”   However, she was the real                           thing.                                                                -  Dana (son) “For me, I will always remember Granny cutting up tomatoes for me when I came to visit, and her always smiling and trying to take care of everyone.”                                                                    -         Lana Evans (granddaughter) “As long as I can remember, I never knew Granny to be mad at anything or anyone.”                                                     -   Jay D. Kinder, Sr. (grandson) “Things grandma Rosemary loved: Coca cola, quilting, Little Mermaid, the Guiding Light, Wizard of Oz, collecting bells, coins, dolls and other things.  Buying shoes, going to the thrift store. Traveling with grandpa.  Talking to grandpa before falling asleep.  Taking care of the babies at Sunday School.  Roses and tulips.  Christmas time.  Red Lobster flounder.  Cole slaw, baked beans, hot cocoa – pictures of family, watching family videos – buying things for her grandchildren and great grandchildren, the church and worshipping God.  Cooking for grandpa and the family – her friends – butterfly crackers – singing with the children – watching her children grow and have their own children.  Seeing the grandkids open presents – helping others in need – country music – old telephones – her family – her children, her grandchildren and most of all, her true love, grandpa Bill. She epitomized “grandma” and was the best example of the love in                    1 Corinthians 13:4-8, and the Proverbs 31 woman.                           – Micayla (granddaughter) and Shirley Kinder (daughter-in-law) My memories: My mother was the first woman I loved in my life.  I have so many memories of my mother.   I suppose my earliest was when I had just turned 4 years old two months earlier, and I was sitting on the back porch swing of our house on Annabel.   I was sitting there with Mommy Armstrong, my step-grandmother,  who lived with us for many years.   Suddenly we heard the sound of the front gate opening.  It was my mother returning home from the hospital.  She had just given birth to my younger brother, Dana.   I remember her carrying this new little baby into the house.   That memory is still very vivid.  And then there were the famous words.  I don’t remember them, but there were some ear-witnesses who heard them from my lips.   Grandmother Thelma in one of her great rhetorical questions said, “What are we going to do with all these babies around here?”   Then I spoke up with the answer.   I had it figured out.  I don’t remember I said it, but the witnesses are still with us.  Grandmother Thelma said, “What are we to do with all these babies?”  In a matter of fact way, I said,  “We’ll just throw them in the trash can.”   I guess that was my way of saying,   “I don’t want to share my mother with any more babies.”   She’s MY mother! But from then on, I had to share her.   We all did.   She was always giving of herself to others.   She loved people, her friends at church, the people she worked with, and her family most of all.   Anybody who has ever visited our house in Baltimore can tell by all the pictures on the wall that she loved her family.   She made you feel special and loved.    When we lived in Louisiana, and I about 6 years old, I laughed myself silly when  I locked my 3 year old brother in the back seat of the car, and I was backing up, pointing and laughing, and I fell backwards into our crawfish pond.  I was sure that a crawfish had crawled deep inside my pants and came running and crying into the house for my mother to look at me and make sure I was okay.   When I fell on my bicycle and bloodied my knee, I knew I had to go to mother and she would patch things up and I would be as good as new again.  And she did.  And did it just right.    I remember when we were living back in Baltimore, and when she gathered all four children onto her bed and she read to us from the big children’s Bible and showed us the pictures.   I don’t remember her doing this too many times.  We were probably fighting each other as siblings for her to continue it many times.  But those early times got me to thinking that the Bible was important and the Word of God needed to have a place in our lives. I remember that she liked peace in the family.  As siblings, we naturally argued with each other and fought with each other (now I can’t remember over what), but we would get mad at yell at each other.  And she would say, “If you can’t say anything good about each other, don’t say anything at all.”   And nobody spoke for weeks. (No, just kidding).  But I remember thinking at the time, how wise this advice sounded and that it might actually work.   Maybe it would be possible to get along.   How could I forget all the family vacations!  To West Virginia.  North Carolina.   The Smokies.  Later to Arizona and back when I was ten years old.   Daddy would do most of the driving and mother would do most of the cooking along the way.   They were a team.  An inseparable team.   She somehow endured my father for 60 years!!   That is 60% of a century!   That fact alone would make her a saint in anyone’s eyes.   Then when I first begin to explore whatever talents I had in music, I would let her be the first to hear my work, to critique my music and lyrics.    But of course, I knew that she would never critique it.   I would invite her down to my room in the basement and let her hear what I had written (on the guitar or on the piano), and she would always just say how great it was.   And I believed her. Then when I decided to go off to Texas to school, I knew I would have to tell my parents that there were no schools in Maryland I wanted to go to.   I thought my mother especially might not want to hear the news.   And she asked wasn’t there any schools around here I could go to?   “How about University of Maryland or University of Baltimore, or Baltimore Community College?”   No, I said, they really don’t have what I want.  She finally began to accept the idea, and when she knew I couldn’t be changed, she even encouraged me a little.   Then when I got to Abilene, my first real place away from home, Sharon sent me a card in the mail to say Hello, and to tell me that mother really missed me. I knew that I had hurt her a little.   And then later, when I told her I wanted to go on to graduate school, again she would say, “Don’t you know enough already? How will that help you?  Why don’t you get a job close to home first?”   And I would say, “No, I really need to learn more.   I knew that more education would open more doors for me.”  Later, she came to accept the fact, that for some reason, I just needed to learn, and she encouraged me in that. And then later, when I told her that I wanted to do mission work in a foreign country.   I thought about Brazil for a little bit, and then later I thought about Korea, she would say, “Why don’t you apply for some jobs with churches closer to home, and or contact the church here in Baltimore?  Maybe you can work here. “  Then again, as she came to know that my mind had been made up, she accepted it and even started to encourage me to do that.   She met many of my international friends that I brought to the house.  And she loved and served all of them.   Maybe the ultimate example of that was in the year 2000 when I invited 25 Koreans to spend not one night, but 2 nights at my parents’ house.   And neither of my parents suggested a motel.   My father said we could find bed or floor space for all of them.   Mother would cook for them.  And she did!   Not just a piece of bread and water, but big breakfasts, and big dinners.   And no one left the table hungry.   I remember her in the kitchen.   She never complained about cooking for so many or even doing all those dishes later.   Only after I got married and had my own wife, did Vicki point out to me how much work my mother was really doing.   I had been too absorbed in my own work before to notice it, and had just taken it for granted.  But doing laundry is a big job, and I can remember so well seeing my mother outside in the back yard, with one clothespin in her mouth and another one in a hand, attaching a shirt or a pair of pants to the line; the cooking the dishwashing, the continual cleaning.     She and grandmother Thelma made so many pies for people through the years.  Many of you remember them, and enjoyed them.   Then after my grandmother died, my mother still kept on baking those delicious chocolate pies or the custard pies, or the lemon meringue pies.   She was such a good cook.   Every holiday, when everyone came home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, or even after Sunday services, when it wasn’t even a holiday, mother would prepare these massive dinners, with salads, and breads, and the country hams, baked beans, cole slaw and the fried chicken, and of course, because I was home, she had to peel extra potatoes, just because I liked her mashed potatoes so well.   And her fried potatoes were unequalled anywhere.    I remember her humility, how she always put everyone above herself.   And if she were here now, she would be so uncomfortable with all this attention placed on her.  She would see it as a waste of our time.  She would say, “Surely you all can think of something better to do today.”   That’s who she was.   Such an example of love and humility. Of course, she had her faults, and made her mistakes.  Her most common ones were taking my grandmother downtown for a doctor’s visit, going into the hospital and then leaving the building through a different door, and spending the next hour and a half trying to find the car.    She wasn’t that good with maps or directions, but would go places anyway - especially with my father.   They were the team that always traveled together.  To West Virginia, and then as family members lived further apart, it was the longer trips to Florida, or Texas to see me in school, or to California, or to see Dana in Wisconsin, or to see us in Oregon when we lived there for awhile, or to Tennessee.  It was always so good to see them pull up in the driveway and hug them both when they got out of the car, or then to give them a final goodbye hug as they would settle back into their car seats to begin the long drive back to Maryland.   Those hugs were more difficult, knowing that the distance would keep us from seeing them for awhile.   I would just watch as their van pulled out into the street, and then sometimes linger a bit longer outside to watch it disappear around the corner and see those last tires disappear out of sight, and wonder how long before their next visit. That is what we wonder today.   We say goodbye to mother again, and we know we will see her again.   But we just don’t know how long it will be.    That’s why there are tears. That’s why the goodbye this time feels so painful, like giant holes in our stomachs.  Something precious how been torn from us, and no one of us was ready for it.   And then in the middle of all of our pain comes a verse to us from the Gospel of John.    I suppose we could place dollar values on different verses in the Bible.   It is all worth something, but there are some places that just carry more value than others.   Some verses in Leviticus are there for a reason, and they have value.   Then there are other places in the prophets, in Isaiah or Jeremiah that just seem to have greater value.  Or we turn to the Psalms, like Psalm 23, “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the Lord is with me, I will fear no evil.”   What is the monetary value of a verse like that?  And the truly amazing thing is that the monetary value (to keep using this imagery) really has no relation to the size of the verse at all.   You see, there is this tiny little verse hidden away in John chapter 11, the smallest verse in the English Bible.   In the original Greek there are smaller ones.   But in the English, John 11:35 only has 2 words.  One word subject.  One short verb and that is it.   But this week,  the stock market value of those two words has just went through the roof!    It is every child’s favorite memory verse.   “Jesus wept.”   That’s it.  Jesus, the Lord of heaven shed tears.    As a boy I never really understood what those words meant, or even why Jesus felt the need to cry.  Why did Jesus weep?   Lazarus, his friend, had died.   Had been put in the tomb already.   His two close friends, Mary and Martha, had already made the arrangements.   The funeral was over.  People were getting ready to head home.  And this is the occasion when Jesus raised Lazarus, brought the dead back to life and Lazarus would walk and talk again.   And Jesus knew that all this would take place in just a few minutes.   Lazarus, the dead friend would live one more time!   But Jesus wept!    The Bible says that when he saw his dear friends weeping, and the others who were there also crying for their loss, Jesus was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.   That’s why he wept.   Jesus knew that Lazarus would be in the tomb just a few more minutes and there would be great rejoicing, but right now there was pain and there was a lot of it.   And he was moved.  He experienced their pain.  And hot, wet tears rolled down his cheeks, just the same as it has rolled down ours the past couple of days.   That’s why I have loved this Jesus so much.   And I know this is why most of you love him, and it is why my mother loved him.  And it’s why she is with him right now,  and all of her suffering is gone.   No more tired body.  No more painful feet that made it difficult for her to walk in her most recent years.   No more weak heart.   This is her celebration week!                 Our mourning is for us.  Not for her.   Mother, you left us too soon, too quick.   In this life, we will never understand why.  But thank you for being our mother, and making your four children the luckiest four kids in the world.           Home