A Matter of Faith

Aunt Judy, a beautiful human

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My Aunt Judy passed away the other day. She was a favorite with me and my brothers, and her passing brought up many memories.

Many years ago — I’m guessing I was in eighth grade and my brother Joel was in 6th — we had one of those infrequent miracles occur in southeast Colorado: a snow day.

We had gotten up that morning, noticed that a snowstorm was roaring (lots of wind, a little snow and zero visibility), turned on KLMR and heard the miraculous line of the school closures in Springfield. (I don’t believe this was the time I called Mr. Wells at his home at 6:30 a.m. to ask him if we were having a snow day. Being the coolest superintendent on the planet he said, “I don’t know, Mark, what do you think we should do?” I said, “snow day”. “OK”, he said, “sounds good”. With an adult’s perspective I know that the snow day was already called, but now I also know that Mr. Wells was a public relations genius.)

In any event, Joel and I were excited to go out and perform good deeds with a snow shovel. You see, that fall our dad had found some snow boots for us at some sort of military surplus store up in Denver or someplace like that.

When you looked inside of these things they said, “U.S. Marines, Rated -40 degrees F.” What? We couldn’t believe our good fortune that we had snow boots that would keep our feet toasty warm up to 40 degrees below zero.

Joel’s and I’s goal was simple and clear. Put on our snow gear, including the boots (which were each roughly the shape and weight of a gallon of milk), grab snow shovels and trudge the six blocks or so to rescue my Aunt Judy — and her family — from the blizzard.

Once outside, our upper body was instantly miserably cold wearing our thinnish coats and hats, but before we had reached the bottom of our front steps, our feet had begun to sweat profusely.

We made it to Judy’s house, entered by the side door, without knocking of course. I was a full-grown adult before I realized doorbells were there for a purpose. As we entered the door we were assaulted by a few distinct things: the strong smell of coffee (Coffee was always on. I have visited Aunt Judy as a full grown adult and as I showed up to the house at 10:30 at night, the first line was, “Let me put on a fresh pot of coffee.”), the welcoming cry of Aunt Judy, “My goodness. Come in. What a nice surprise. Take off those wet clothes.” and the smell of homemade chicken noodle soup.

Who would have thought there was so much depth to homemade noodles? I looked up the recipe in several places. Here are the ingredients: eggs, flour, milk and salt. That’s it. The deal is, if you had Aunt Judy’s homemade noodles when she made chicken noodle soup on a cold day, the taste was indescribable. She must have added a secret ingredient.

It’s just coming to me at this moment. I know what it was. Maybe you know, too.

The secret ingredient was …

Well, I certainly didn’t want to use a cliche in this essay, but I just couldn’t see any way around it. Just because it is a cliche doesn’t mean it is not true.

My brother and I knew: mission accomplished. We had successfully rescued Aunt Judy and her kids from the unbroken monotony of a snow day without company and the burden of eating the delicious meal all on their own.

The deal is, there are a lot of terrific, miserable blizzards that blow in a life and most of them aren’t made of snow. If we are fortunate, someone will suit up, get out their shovel and show up.

There is a beautiful scripture in Psalm 68:6: “God places the lonely or the solitary in families”.

There is an unstated subtext here. For every lonely or solitary person or orphan who wants to be placed in a family, you have to have a parent in a family who says yes: “Yes, I will take you and make you part of my family. I will make room for you in my heart. I see you.”

No one was better than this than Aunt Judy. I actually think that her way of moving through the world was to say “yes” before she even knew what was asked.

Her more than 27 years of working the hallways of Springfield’s schools were nothing more than opportunities to adopt more children and make sure they knew they had at least one caring adult in their life, who actually saw the value in them, the gifts in them and believed in them.

Look, I had a good family with great parents, and I got adopted by Aunt Judy.

The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians, “For you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many Fathers”.

Or as I want to say, “Fathers or Mothers’.” 

Judy was a mother to her community.

In the book of Luke, Jesus said that all of the law and the prophets hang on two things: Love God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. In that same place, he told a story that clarified that “Your neighbor” is the one who you encounter who is in need (we call this clarification, “the parable of the good Samaritan”).

To maintain my metaphor, when Judy saw someone in need, she met them in any way that she could. This was her version of showing up with a shovel on a snowy day. She was a beautiful aunt, mother and loving human. She was a great example. I miss her.

This column may include both fiction and nonfiction, and views expressed do not necessarily represent those of The SUN. Submissions can be sent to editor@pagosasun.com.