For a second night in a row, Mama was awakened again, only this time because someone was speaking her name.
She sat up and focused on the doorway to her room from where the voice had seemed to come. The dim hallway light backgrounded the fact that no one was there. Then, the gentle voice spoke her name once more. . .
*******
. . . I often think about what happened to a friend of my brother’s when she lost the last living family member, her father, when she was about age seventeen. Her mother had died when Vera was born, and an aunt and uncle and her father had raised her in a big farmhouse down the road from our home. The house was sold after the death of all the adults, and hours before it was turned over to the new owner, Vera went inside one last time to say good- bye and make sure that all the belongings had been removed.
*******
The only thing left in the large empty house was a piece of stationery with the family’s name embossed at the top. It was lying on the kitchen counter as though discarded, and Vera might have thrown it out except it was Christmas time, and this note had holly and berries sketched in red and green pencil along its rim. She picked it up and examined it more carefully. In a red pencil was written, in her father’s hand, the following message:
Gather we now the scattered holly.
*******
. . . A noted scientist said recently that miracles are in the timing. I think he is correct. With only a few exceptions, my stories have the element of timing crucial to the effect of the experience. Something to consider as you examine your own lifetime events, past and future.