Teacher Says, “Every Time A Bell Rings, An Angel Tinkles”.

Yesterday, I poured a cup of coffee on my parents’ grave.

I don’t understand why I do a lot of the things I do.

As is my custom on Christmas Eve, I drove out alone to the cemetery where my father and mother and grandmother are buried to visit their graves. I worked with a string trimmer, rake and broom to tidy up the gravesites. I edged the stones and raked fallen leaves.

I remembered.

And I cried.

I cried because my parents were always so disappointed in me.

Remembering how much my folks loved their morning coffee, I carried a cup with me and poured some on each grave as though I were some pagan making an offering to the dead.

Why did I do that? I certainly don’t believe they are thirsty or in need of any earthly thing. I have attended pagan funerals where mourners threw offerings into the grave, money, cigarettes, liquor. But such a practice plays no part in my own belief system, yet here I was pouring coffee on my parents’ grave.

The Scripture says that it is appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment.

Although I tried hard to dwell on good things they had done for me, the memories that welled up, were all those about their disappointment in me even when I had done no particularly wrong.

When I was a Boy Scout, I won scads of awards; never once would my parents attend an awards function. They were so afraid I might do or say something that would embarrass them.

When I became an adult, my mother refused to read the articles I wrote because she found me such an embarrassment.

Poor thing.

My mother embarrassed easily.

She even lied about her age — by one day.

Going through her papers after her death I found that, while she always claimed her birthday fell on November first, she was actually born on October 31^st. I’ll bet she lied about that one day difference so nobody would know she was born on Halloween.

Oh well, I did what I could for them while they lived and now I visit their graves on Christmas Eve each year although I don’t believe in flowers or such for the dead, yet I do it.

And, I poured out a cup of coffee on the graves as some sort of sign of respect.

I don’t understand why I did that.

To get to the cemetery involves a drive through the toughest section of town. Bums and derelicts and winos and nut cases huddled in many doorways, in bus stop shelters and on park benches.

Although I must say the neighborhood improvement tactics must be working because only one prostitute accosted me as I drove past. Used to be there’d be dozens on a Sunday morning. Once a telephone repairman was up a pole at Eighth & Main when he felt something tug on his boot. He looked down to find a girl had climbed the pole to solicit him!

When I was younger and more involved in hands-on mission work, This was my area to serve among incredibly poor people. Families living in cars. Men dying in the streets. Women ravaged. I served in a soup kitchen a couple of times a week, distributed clothes, and other such goodie goodie stuff. Don’t know that it did anybody much good but it was what I could do.

Made me feel superior if nothing else.

Driving from the cemetery, I felt a longing to be serving in that world again.

The greatest honor I have ever been paid was back when I taught Bible studies on Saturday nights at a dirt-floor mission. My car broke down and I called the director to say I could not make it to teach. He put it to a vote among the 20 or 30 men at the mission offering them the choice of having a free Saturday night or sending someone to pick me up and bring me in to teach a Bible lesson.

They voted for the Bible study!

Humbling.

The greatest honor I’ve ever had.

Speaking of Bible study:

A slew of our children attended the Christmas Eve service with Beauty and me and that pleased me so. But afterwards, as Ginny and I watched the late local news, the anchorman said, “Tonight for Christmas, thousands of people are gathered in Jerusalem where Jesus was born”.

Really?

In Jerusalem?

Later, we watched the tail end of It’s A Wonderful Life:

“Teacher says every time a bell rings, an angel tinkles”.