I had a very unsettling shock. As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve been getting the old farm house cleaned out over the past two years because it’s falling down, and it was time to get in there and save what we could. A lot of stuff we just put in rubbermaid boxes and put in the trailer house or I bought them back and put them in my basement. Yesterday when I went down there to get some more amaryllis bulbs, I grabbed some small boxes and bought them up to look through them.

One box had sympathy cards from 1949, and it took a while to figure out they were from when my older brother was born. He was born severely deformed and live just a short while after birth.

The next box I opened was much worse. There was a billfold and a bank book, both charred, and a small box with charred coins and metal buttons and clasps. They were from my Dad. He was killed in a farming accident when I was 14 months old, out plowing and the tractor turned over on him and caught fire. My mother never went through the billfold. There were still photos of my two older sisters, his driver’s license, and some half burned papers still in it.

All I can think about is how horrible it must have been for Mom. She deserved so much better of a life than she had, and it’s my firm belief that she will get that life after the resurrection.