Precious Memories

When we decided to celebrate our 50^th wedding anniversary with a family vacation at Deep Creek Lake, it was our son, Robb’s, idea that he and his twin sister, Angi, buy us a 50-inch screen television for fifty years of marriage.

Since Deep Creek Lake is near my home town of Grantsville, Maryland, it was also Robb’s idea to present their gift to us at a lake near the house where I grew up—a lake he remembered walking to with Angi when they were kids.

On the day the presentation was planned, we ate lunch at Penn Alps where I worked as a teenager, and then headed for the lake. Donn and I had no idea where we were going or why, but as we approached the house where I was raised, we all noticed that one of the big trees in the front yard had been cut down. It was the tree that had stood closest to the house where my dad had hung a swing, the tree where I climbed with my book to hide from my mother to avoid work, the tree my big brother (eleven years older than me) climbed so high he scared us to death.

I was in sheer disbelief as we stopped to talk to the young man mowing the yard. (His mother, Heidi Ruggiero, refreshed my memory recently about why the tree had been cut down. She said part of it broke off about ten years ago in an ice storm, narrowly missing the ramp in front of the house. Then eight years later, another ice storm brought down more of the tree, pulling a wire from the house. It had begun to rot on the inside and left them no choice–it had to go.) He told us we could have some of the logs that hadn’t been used yet. Donn and Angi’s husband, Matt, who both have taken up wood-working hobbies, went to the back yard to choose a few small logs. It was some consolation that I would have a memory from that special tree.

The wood had to age for awhile before it could be used, and the last time we’d discussed it, Donn still hadn’t decided what he would make. Then two weeks ago, he told me had a surprise for me. He said, “I planned to give it to you for Christmas, but I couldn’t wait!” In the dining room, I found the coolest thing I could have imagined. He had recreated the tree with little figurines representing me (up in the tree, reading), my baby brother, Larry, sleeping, and figures representing my big brother, Ron (which we’ve now put on top since I told Donn about Ron climbing so high), and my older sisters, Lulie, Judy and Ruthie. (Donn said it’s his own version of historical fiction!)

If not for Robb’s idea to present our 50-inch television at the lake near where I grew up, we wouldn’t even have known the tree had been cut down, let alone have been given wood from it. In retrospect, I realized that even the idea to celebrate our 50^th anniversary with a family vacation at Deep Creek Lake came from Robb’s offhand comment that we needed to do a Deep Creek family vacation again some time. (He’d requested we do that before we went to Japan in 2008.)

All of this has taken on so much more significance since we know that vacation was our last to share with Robb. The substantial amount of money we spent seems completely insignificant. It’s as if all these things that were his idea became, in essence, (though unbeknownst to him), his last gift to us, as well as the memories and photographs from that vacation which we treasure more than words can express. Only God, who knows the future, could have prompted this amazing gift.

Father, thank you for the incredible ways you work behind the scenes to give us gifts, even as we mourn the loss of someone so dear. Amen.

Pictures: The fall pictures of my childhood home were passed along by my sister-in-law, Natalie. I’ve always thought the lake Robb is looking at in the lake picture was the one near our home. Donn isn’t so sure? Maybe someone will correct me. The second picture below shows us enjoying the shade of that wonderful tree. Sitting on the ground l. to r. are me and my sister, Ruth. Seated l. to r. are my sisters-in-law Lola and Natalie, and Uncle Jonas’s wife, Aunt Thelma.