A Tribute to Mama Lucy (1938-2008)

It was not long after I met you and your daughter, Julie, that I felt compelled to call you Mom. Of course, I had my own mother, a quite wonderful woman, but there was something about your loving and nurturing care of everyone that crossed your path that made me want to address you in the most intimate manner possible. And you were very much like a mom to me. You treated me as one of your own when you invited me to share your home with you and your daughter while I got back on my feet financially. The experience is something I won't soon forget.

Despite your great ability to nurture, your biggest legacy will be your unwavering faith. You trusted God at a level that most of us can only aspire to. Your faith saw you through as you raised 4 children on your own while your husband, Jim, was in Vietnam. Your unflinching trust in God helped you cope as you watched your relationship with your husband deteriorate into something unrecognizable. You reaped the fruits of your faith when your marriage rose up again from the ashes and became something better than it was before. Because God had been there for you in all those difficult times, you were able to seek His comfort after Jim's untimely death, believing that God would use even this situation for good. You leaned on God once more as you succumbed to the cruelties of lung cancer. In spite of the grim diagnosis, you remained at peace, and you managed to hang on to that peace throughout the entire ordeal. In your mind, if God healed you, allowing you more time to spend with your family, that was great. If you died and were able to rejoin Jim in Heaven, well that was okay too. As far as you could see, it was a win-win situation.

As admirable as your faith was, it sometimes left you rigid in your beliefs. I remember the time when I returned from a God and Politics seminar at a local Methodist church and you told me I had to be careful with the Methodists because some of them believed in ordaining homosexuals, a warning I considered ironic since you often accepted ministry from your daughter, a lesbian. We went on to discuss abortion and how you believed this was the most important issue to God (even though the Bible says no such thing). When I tried to suggest that there are other issues that also garner God's attention, you would hear nothing of it. I cried after our conversation because you were unwilling to even listen to other viewpoints, to my viewpoint. I felt as if a part of me was being rejected that day. This was the only time your beliefs caused me any negative feelings. Mostly, I found your old-school approach endearing.

Religious inflexibility notwithstanding, your legacy of faith will not be replaced anytime soon. Those of us who are left behind need more time to work up to where you are. And even then, I suppose we'll only be shadows of what you represented. But rest assured, we're trudging along in the example you set for us. Some of us may be going in paths that are foreign to you, paths that might offend your conservative sensibilities, but I promise you that we are reaching for the same goal, that we'll all end up in the same place, partying at the same eternal party.

Rest in peace, Mama Lucy. We'll see you soon.