Eunice Mae Olson Widmer is dead.
Long live (the memory) of Eunice M. Widmer
My mother, Eunice Mae Olson Widmer, has come back as an umbrella.
Now don’t get me wrong.
I still intellectually believe the good old Anabaptist and Adventist teaching
That death is like a sleep. Unconscious.
She is neither in heaven or hell as of this writing in the early days of 2023.
She is in her grave in Lake County, California.
(We didn’t lose her!)
Right next to her husband of 54 and the love of her life 15 or so additional years
Both before and after that Christmas Day at the altar.
She is awaiting her wake-up call from the Jesus on the resurrection morning.
But in a sense, all our beloved dead come back as a variety of things.
As I heard on a podcast this week
Some come back as airports (named after them),
Bridges (named after them),
Golf tournaments (same)
Or like her husband/my father: Dr. Elmer A. Widmer
As a micro-biology lab (named after him a few years before his death).
(He also has come back as a set of binoculars, but that is another story.)
I needed an umbrella this week,
With the atmospheric river flowing
Over the river and through the woods
Flooding the river and knocking down trees
Breaching levees and stalling out cars,
Here in the Western United States of America.
Specifically, my mother has come back to me -
In my memorializing mind at least -
Through the umbrella that she had at the ready in her closet
That is now in the trunk of my car.
It is a unique rain blocker.
Neon yellow-green,
With a reflective band on a tapering expanding and contracting tube
That catches all the drips and drops when I close it up
As I enter a building - a proper shelter in the time of storm.
It is spring-powered.
Push the button.
Then, give it a shake, helping it pop open.
There is even one panel of the fabric that is clear plastic,
Allowing me to see where I’m going on murky, misty mornings.
Well, one time while I used it in the past -
The thing-a-ma-bob - that keeps the keep-everything-together tube
Tight on the tip of the umbrella - disappeared.
The tube had nothing to stop it now from rocketing off the end
As I pushed it up, to deploy this portable canopy.
I was heartbroken.
I couldn’t let Eunice the Umbrella be broken and useless
Like so many umbrellas before her, tossed in the trash.
My ongoing grief required me to fix her.
However, there is no umbrella repair section at the hardware store.
What to do?
I stopped at one store and bought a lock nut that fit it…kind of.
I thought I should add some hot glue to it just to be sure, but
I was content to put it back in the trunk
To help me stay dry during the next day’s deluge
On my walks between the two hospital buildings that I serve.
The next morning, on 1/5/23, I need Eunice the Umbrella
As the heavens opened as I got out of the car.
I opened her up and headed across the parking lot, up the stairs
Inside for my Covid screening – Temperature 97.2 F.
I closed Eunice up and was shocked to see the lock nut…gone…
And the whole tube…also gone!
I clocked in, stashed my backpack in my office and
Went back out into the dripping darkness to look for those two items.
I found the lock nut in the middle of the parking lot.
But not the tube.
It was still too dark and too wet to get down on my knees
(a difficult chore now for this man in his 6th decade of life)
And peer under the cars.
A couple of hours later, I looked again…
Eureka! I found the tube!
Eunice can be fixed again.
And she was…with a larger nut from a larger hardware store
On the way home that very day.
Why does this matter?
Well, I miss my mother.
And when anything thing she loved and touched can linger in my fingers,
It helps heal my grieving heart.
(Our family name is still on it, in permanent Sharpie, that is starting to fade.)
I couldn’t fix my flesh and blood mother.
There was no cure for the cancer that ended her life
Two days after her last “Mother’s Day” in 2020.
She, me, my sister, the doctors and apparently,
Even God himself
Were powerless to fix the real her.
But I can fix her now…now that she has returned as an umbrella.
She also comes back occasionally as a loaf of holiday fruit bread,
As a bowl of ice cream,
Or as a visit to the OB-GYN ward at the hospital.
(Good nurses, there!)
I take comfort knowing there are people today,
In their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s
Who felt her competent nurse hands
As the second person to hold them
And the first person to cradle them
Even before their own mothers.
Part of her lives on in them today…bless them.
I take comfort knowing that her living offspring
2 children, 5 grandchildren
Also manifest her in the world today.
Eunice M. Widmer is dead.
Long live (the memory) of Eunice M. Widmer.
I treasure thoughts of her as I hold her again…as I walk in the rain.
O.Kris Widmer, Son
1/6/2023
