It is nearly impossible to consider. The e-mail, shrouded in pain, said simply, “I thought you should know – Gloria Ormord died this morning.” In my horror, I deleted the e-mail for good. It just wasn’t right. A phone call supplied the verification that the words were real, but it still didn’t make sense.
Gloria and her husband Brian had recently transplanted their four children from the Twin Cities to the bucolic sweetness of our rural community. Gloria’s parents had come “home” years earlier, and the Ormords eventually followed, building their dream home and settling in.
We met Brian as a member of our ushering crew, and immediately liked his easy-going and open nature. My first conversation with Gloria was beyond flattering. She told me she noticed my name in the bulletin when here visiting her parents, and liked it so much she used it when naming their second daughter. That decision had nothing to do with me at all, but it was noteworthy that she would have mentioned it so kindly. Our quick and sporadic conversations held the promise of a budding friendship, and I counted on the opportunity to know her better.
Brian agreed to lead the 40 Days of Community program at our church last fall, and when he called to include Hubba and me on the planning committee, we jumped at the chance to get to know him better. We wanted to get to know him better. Everyone who meets him does.
With four school-aged children, getting to know Gloria would never advance beyond the gabbing we could fit in while sitting in the pew or greeting each other in the Narthex. She had lots of new friends, I learned, in the parents of her children’s classmates. She had the opportunity to cement those relationships in their mother’s bible study and on the sidelines of school events.
There is no sense to her death. She was here one minute, and gone the next. She was in church for Lenten service on Wednesday night, and collapsed early Thursday morning, before the kids were even off for school. And now what?
Heaven, that’s what. Gloria, her husband, her parents and brothers and sisters and extended family share the knowledge that there is an order in this chaos. There is a divine gift in the faith that comes with this knowledge. That faith gift doesn’t make those who survive her happy that she’s in heaven. No, everyone wants her here, where she is needed and loved and embraceable. Who could ever be ready to give her up, let alone with such cruel abruptness at an inopportune age, with young children and a husband who relies on her?
But Gloria is in Heaven. It does indeed bring comfort, but it’s comfort in the place of understanding. Those of us left behind want to believe that having her here is better than having her in Heaven. We understand very clearly that she is needed here, and those she left behind will suffer terribly because she isn’t. There is no way to translate the bereavement of her mother, her father, her husband, and most of all, her children, who will bear the loss the longest of all. We cannot understand, but we know she is in Heaven.
And what can we do? Pray. It’s another crazy notion, like the crazy-stupid comfort that Gloria is in Heaven. Brian and the children and her parents and her brothers and sisters and extended family need our prayers. They need our casseroles, our babysitting, our hands and hearts and embraces of sympathy. Though not the same coming from us, it’s what we can offer. Those are the concrete things that Gloria could give them, some of which any of us can provide.
Gloria wants us to pray for them, too. She lived that bidding. She wants us to keep praying, because she believed in prayer, learning it from her parents and teaching it to her children. She prayed with her husband and her brothers and sisters. She prayed with her friends.
We are in the continuum of belief with Gloria. She now knows what we believe and hope for, and at some point we’ll begin to feel her cheer us on through the pain to the promise. The healing will eventually begin, but the loss will never be understood.
Believing, praying, Heaven. The promise of the Father, the journey of the Son, and the gift of the Spirit, passed in love from generation to generation. It is what joins us all in Gloria, and brings strength to our sharing with her bereaved, pained family.
Thank you, Heavenly Father, for Gloria Hougen Ormord’s life. Her presence here was a blessing to those who knew her, and we will trust in Your will to provide comfort and aid for those she left here. Heal us, Father. The misery is unspeakable, so we will listen to the words You speak to us instead. Amen.
Copyright © 3/10/06 Kari E.O. Burns
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