I Came To Say Goodbye

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WHAT CAME BEFORE US · PART ONE

I am sitting at Sea-Tac, waiting to board my flight to Amsterdam, then Johannesburg, and finally home to Blantyre.

This has been such a special trip—filled with tears, but also laughter, joy and deep gratitude.

Most of all, I feel humbled that God allowed me to be here in Washington this past month: to be with Aunt Denise on her last day, and then to spend the following weeks with her children and grandchildren, sifting through her tea sets, quilts, photographs, letters and family heirlooms.

Grief has been strange.

There has been so much joy as we’ve enjoyed one another’s presence. And yet, we’ve each talked about how the tears come when we finally lay our heads on our pillows at night.

Tears of gratitude for a life well lived.

Tears of sadness that her presence is no longer on this earth.

Tears of thankfulness for a life that shaped mine, taught me tricks in the kitchen, loved my family fiercely and believed deeply in what God was doing in our lives.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, something unexpected happened.

I came to Washington to say goodbye to one generation, and somehow, in the process, I was introduced to generations I had never known.

I spent countless hours rifling through old photographs, letters, Bibles and scraps of paper. People who had once been names on a family tree began to feel real.

I found the words of my great-grandmother Mary, written more than a century ago, describing her understanding of missions:

“Missions means more to me at present than they once did. I used to think they meant just preaching the gospel but so many more things are included. In many places there must be food, clothing, shelter, education, also hospitals with medical aid.”

She went on to quote Jesus’ words in Matthew 25 about feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing those in need and caring for the sick.

Then she lived it.

She left the comforts of her life in Illinois for the remote Appalachian mountains of Kentucky, where she taught Sunday School at Witherspoon College in Buckhorn and documented the people and life around her through the lens of her camera.

More than a hundred years later, I held those words in my hands.

As I read them, I thought of myself, my parents and Aunt Denise.

She had that same kind of heart.

She left the familiar for Taiwan and Japan in the 1980s. Decades later, she became one of the fiercest advocates for our family and for what God is doing in Malawi and across Africa.

Now, as I sit in an airport preparing to cross the Atlantic again, I find myself thinking about legacy differently.

We inherit more than DNA.

We inherit stories, courage, faith, curiosity, convictions and ways of seeing the world.

Sometimes, perhaps, even a longing for places we’ve never been and people we haven’t met yet.

I have spent much of my adult life crossing oceans, making a home far from the one I was born into, and believing that the Gospel calls us not only to speak about the love of Jesus, but to embody it—to feed, welcome, build, teach, care and love. And especially to set the table.

For most of my life, I thought that was simply my story.

This month, I began to realize how many chapters came before mine.

And as I fly home to Malawi tonight, I carry Aunt Denise, Mary, Winnie Sue with me. One I knew, and two great grandmas I’ve only recently discovered.

Not only because we share DNA, but because the things they loved, the things they believed in and the way she loved us have become part of who I am.

What a gift it is to discover that the life you’re living didn’t begin with you.

Yesterday, at Aunt Denise’s memorial, my cousin’s husband, Evan, said it so well-Denise was a connector, and the glue of so many people’s lives. He noted that even in her passing, she was connecting family and friends, in the quilt of life that she was busy sewing. And she has done exactly that. In her passing, I was able to reconnect with her children, cousins church community, and she has opened the doors to the women in my life that shaped who I am today, without ever seeing them face to face.

I took my last photo in front of my grandma and grandpa’s tree that I have spent my whole life taking photos in front of. My grandma’s eyes were always so red and filled with tears as she said goodbye to us, and now I know that feeling as I say goodbye to her home, a place she stored our family’s history, and then my aunt protected it after her.