Lori Bourne

A Life Well Lived

As many of you know, I have very elderly grandparents. I recently wrote a post about my 106-year-old grandfather's life. Yesterday morning, he passed away. My parents were up in Canada with him just last month, at Thanksgiving, to celebrate my grandmother's 100th birthday. I am so glad they got to see him one last time.

My dad wrote this about his father yesterday, and told me I could post it at my blog. Here's what he said:

"My father, age 106, laid his burdens down and entered the presence of our Lord this Wednesday morning. Dad did not have an easy life. He was born in 1902 to a German family living in the Ukraine, and during World War I, Russia insisted that all of the Germans had to become refugees lest they side with Germany in the war. My father's family was forced to make the difficult trek to Afghanistan, and there his mother (my grandmother) died at the age of 46 and was buried in a mass grave in Kabul.  My father, age 12, did not have a chance to say goodbye to his mother and thought he'd never stop crying.

When the war was over in 1918, Dad and his father and two brothers, were able to return to their farm and several years later he was able to immigrate to Canada. There in a church, he met my mother who had just become a Christian through the preaching of an evangelist. Dad walked her home, asked her to marry him, and within three weeks they were married. That was 77 years ago.

I will spare you all the hardship my father endured both in Europe and also the challenge of raising five children on a small farm. To this day, we as children don't understand how he did it all: for example, having to shovel countless loads of grain years before grain augers were invented. In addition, he had panic attacks, and couldn't work for days at a time. We as children said "goodbye" to him a number of times, because he thought he was dying. We never dreamed we would see Dad live a long life.

We were wrong.

Dad had come to know Christ as Savior in the Ukraine and throughout his long life he loved God, read the Bible consistently and cared deeply only about that which was most important. "I read the whole book of Ephesians today," he told me when we visited him in Canada when he was about 101.

When he was a hundred, I knelt next to him and asked him to give me a blessing as the patriarchs did in Old Testament times. He held my head in both of his hands and prayed a prayer that "would make heaven shake" as I put it.

When we visited my parents this past May, my dad, now in a wheelchair, spoke very little. He recognized us, but only occasionally. So while we were sitting and talking with my mother, he appeared to be sleeping and was quiet the whole time. Then to our surprise, he said in a complete German sentence, "We have been speaking about the present…now it is time for us to speak about eternity and the glory of God!"

Well, Dad, now you can speak of eternity and the glory of God in a way that you have never done before. Thanks for all the hard work…the care you gave to me and my siblings. Thanks for the hundreds of hours of prayers offered up on behalf of all of us. I can only hope those prayers will be answered.

Now my dear mother, who enjoyed her 100th birthday party three weeks ago, is a widow, anxiously awaiting her own entry into heaven. She often prayed Dad would die before she did so that she would know he was well taken care of. God answered that prayer."

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Many people have told me that I have an amazing family, and that is very true. I do not take any of it for granted - the unconditional love, the support, the faith, the strong family bond.

I have a cousin, Dallas, who was killed in a car accident in 1981 at the age of 16. My own firstborn daughter was stillborn 13 years ago. Today I have been picturing my cousin, my daughter, and my grandfather hanging out in heaven. I think they're having a great time.

All Things

I've been meaning to write a new post for this blog for awhile but I've been really busy. I wasn't sure what to write about - my youthful obsession with David Letterman, Christmas memories through the years - but tonight I realized what I'd like to share. I love to tell stories, so let me tell you an amazing story.

Five years ago exactly, my youngest sister, Lisa, and I were both pregnant. I was due in the middle of December and she in the middle of January. We were both having girls, and both of us were excited about our Christmas babies. But for Lisa, there was sorrow mixed in with joy.

Nine months earlier, Lisa's husband Ben, a Lieutenant in the Army, had been sent to Iraq at the beginning of the war. Lisa and Ben, only married for a few years, had been living in Germany where Ben was stationed, and had no thoughts of having a baby yet. However, just a week or two after Ben left for Iraq, Lisa found out she was pregnant.

The idea of being alone for the whole nine months - with no guarantee of Ben being able to come back for the baby's birth - was scary and sad for her. But when she told Ben the news they quickly began to get excited.

Lisa called Ben's parents, who lived in the Chicago area, to tell them about the pregnancy. They were excited, too, but had some news of their own. Ben's dad had just been diagnosed with lung cancer and given nine months to live.

A month later, the Army allowed Ben to come back to the US for two weeks and see his father. Lisa flew back here also so they were together for a little bit. They had such mixed emotions; on one hand, they were delighted about the baby. On the other, they were worried about Ben's dad. On top of it all, Ben had to go back to Iraq (specifically, Baghdad), and his life was in danger every day.

As the summer faded into fall, Ben's dad became very ill. Lisa moved back here from Germany because she was finding it difficult to be pregnant and alone. This way she could live with my parents, and be with her in-laws at the hospital. 

By November, Ben's dad had gone into an irreversible coma. The cancer had spread to the base of his brain and there was nothing the doctors could do. He didn't have much longer to live, and Ben had to make a decision: he could only leave Iraq once, for two weeks. Should he come back for his dad's funeral, or for the baby's birth?

As his dad's health declined, Ben decided to come home and see his dad one more time while he was still alive. Ben arrived in the US the week after Christmas. His dad was still in a coma and near death, and a few days after Ben came home, his father passed away.

The family scheduled the funeral for January 4th. On the morning of January 4th, Ben put on his dress blues - his formal Army uniform -  and drove to the funeral home. Lisa was starting to feel contractions (two weeks early) and had my mom take her to the hospital.

As soon as the funeral ended, Ben drove to the hospital and got there in time to witness the birth of their baby, Abigail. Still wearing his dress blues, he held Abby and cried tears of joy and sorrow. As Ben said later, Abby was the rose rising from the ashes, the promise of new life.

Rarely have I seen such a clear picture of the circle of life. Death and birth, so starkly contrasted. Pain and happiness, so tightly mingled. Ben, at the center of this maelstrom, dealt so gracefully with everything that came his way. I have never heard him express any bitterness about missing nine of the most important months in his family's life.

Every year at this time I think about that difficult experience five years ago, and thank God that Ben and Lisa survived their tumultuous year. Ben is no longer with the Army, and he and Lisa recently welcomed another baby girl, Evelyn, into their family under much better circumstances. Where there was grief, there is now healing and acceptance.

I once heard someone say that everyone has a story to tell. This is Ben and Lisa's story, and I am honored to tell it.