Due to Christmas, the blog will be updated with a new post today, and then again on Monday. No posting on Tuesday or Wednesday. Back on Thursday morning, okay?
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My dear friend, Lucy, whom I met at Kent State University lives in Wickliffe. We always say we're going to get together but we don't. We do talk on the phone on occasion and she is the same, down-to-earth, caring, compassionate person that she was more than 40 years ago.
Lucy is Italian and their family roots apparently spring from the northern areas because Lucy is fair-skinned and has auburn hair (or the last time I saw her, she did). She is short and smiles a lot, and she has soulful brown eyes.
When I met Lucy she had already met the love of her live, Ron, and then she got engaged. Ron was already launched out in the real world and he'd come to campus every Friday night to pick up Lucy. Theirs often seemed like a storybook relationship. Right after college, the two married and by this time Ron was in the service. They traveled to Germany and there had their first daughter. When they returned, they settled in Wickliffe down the street from her mother's house and had three more children.
When Ron was about 38, he started having some health problems and went to the doctor for it. The doctor's treatment did not include some tests, because in his words, "You're too young for cancer." He wasn't. It was colon cancer. Lucy prayed so hard for Ron. Through their church she organized a bus trip for people who needed healing and as the day for them to leave got closer, Ron couldn't make the trip. Lucy went instead, a very brave thing to do, especially leaving Ron behind.
When she came back, she immediately noticed a change in Ron. No more bitterness, no more anger, only a strong faith in God. That, she said, was the miracle and that, she said, is why she was supposed to go on that trip. Ron lost his fight with cancer and died at age 39, leaving Lucy (who had always been a tad timid) to raise three girls and a boy. And she did this well, with wonderful assistance from her devoted brother and her parents. Then her dad died, so that both she and her mother were widows.
On the Christmas card I received yesterday, Lucy's handwritten note said that her wonderful mom died in June. I know that because of Ron's death and because of her father's death, Lucy and her sweet mother were much closer. Her mother always made pizzelles, the anise-flavored flat cookies that Italians like to make. In fact, Lucy had told me a few years ago, her mother got a new pizzelle iron at 80+ years old.
So today I think of Lucy and the much more somber first Christmas without the family matriarch. And I think of the love and faith of this strong family who while always respecting the other's pride, offered help and aid whenever needed.
Like in the movie, Polar Express, the bell that can only be heard when you "believe," to me means to believe in Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Let us hold the bell to our ears and listen to the beautiful choirs of angels!! Let us believe.
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