Derek Russell
Contributing columnist
Toward the end of my mother’s life, I grew more aware of what little value material possessions are. My mother had done well, scrimping and saving, but also enjoying life along the way. After losing her husband (my father) in her 50s, she had worried her way into having enough to survive the late years of her life and to pass on a small inheritance to my sister and me. For several years she had been trying to downsize, with limited success.
Each visit meant mom trying to give me books (with her running commentary scrawled in the margins), or plant stands to give to a grandchild, or boxes of old photographs. Then came a day when we realized mom couldn’t make it on her own anymore in her house, so we moved her into assisted living. She told us repeatedly how she had worked it all out — she had enough benefits to go into a nice place and not be a bother to us. Her careful meticulous planning, all worked out with handwritten pages of her computations, assured us that she did have enough to last her through the end of her life.
Most of her possessions did not go with her. I organized them for a sale where she lived in Kentucky, and then the Covid pandemic hit and the sale was off. A trip down with a U-Haul got her possessions to my garage in Ohio. Then her boxes of seasonal decorations (lots of those), tablecloths, kerosene lamps, blankets, empty picture frames, as well as old clothes and shoes were auctioned off for a song and a few dollars. I didn’t want to tell mom the total from the sale. It hardly seemed fair, but in the end, that is the way of material things.
With mom’s failing health, she had several more moves from one level of care to another. The possessions she had kept with her didn’t all make the cut. With each move the pile got smaller. By the end of that process, mom’s things were limited to a wardrobe and a bedside table. All the rest had been given to her children and grandchildren or auctioned off.
Mom died a year ago last fall. After the funeral, her ashes were temporarily placed behind a larger-than-life picture of her on a bookshelf in my sister’s home. In the spring, we flew with the ashes to New York to put them in their final resting place next to the remains of my father, where mom always wanted to be buried.
When I was holding the box of ashes, carrying them to the hole in the ground, it hit me with force: this is the way of all material things. In the end, all that we’ve bought and invested in drops away from us. We’re left with fewer and fewer things along the way, until we no longer possess even our bodies. As the funeral liturgy insists, “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” All the cars we’ve driven, the homes we’ve lived in, the books we’ve read, the family heirlooms we’ve dusted, all get passed on or thrown out.
There are some who insist that this is the whole of reality, that only the material exists, and once it is gone, it is gone. The physical world is all there is, and any thought beyond the material is wishful self-delusion, superstition, a mirage of the mind. I’ve always had more than a little pity for the materialist, who views life from the philosophy of positivism (all that exists can be scientifically verified and nothing else). Not only is there a lack of imagination in such a view, but there is a lack of hope as well.
It took mom’s box of ashes for me to hear something that Jesus once said with new ears. I’d always heard his warning but not the hope of his statement when asked by someone in the crowd to arbitrate in a family-inheritance squabble. He said, “Who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you… Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:14-15)
My mother was so much more than the abundance of her possessions. Wherever she went, people laughed at her antics and funny sayings. Whoever she was with, she wanted them to know they were welcome to come into her home and have a meal with her. She always rooted for the underdogs and came against the privileged with surprising ferociousness. She taught kids in Sunday School for years and had a way of keeping them spellbound in hearing the grand stories of scripture. When it came to being a mom, she was always on our side, even when we were wrong. My sister and I saw that pattern continue in mom’s relationships with her grandchildren.
In the funeral service for mom, she had left specific instructions. The mandate oft-repeated and emphasized was that there were to be balloons at her funeral — lots of them. It was to be a celebration, a party, and her only regret was to not be there to enjoy it with us.
If the materialist is right, there is nothing left of my mother. There are some ashes in a box in a hole in the ground in New York, but that is it. I may have no proof that a positivistic view would accept as valid, but I side with Jesus on this one. My mother’s life was never about her possessions when she was alive, and her lack of earthly possessions does not bother her or define her now. I believe that in God’s love, she lives on, because He was at the center of her life. I also believe that on the other side of the ashes, I will see her again, and we will laugh in joy.
Derek Russell is pastor of the Hillsboro Global Methodist Church. He loves Jesus, family, dogs and football.
