OH MY PAPA
How Great Thou Art (song)
Easter is a time when we think of fresh beginnings and refurbish our faith for another life in the hereafter. Sometimes, this is hard to do without any concrete evidence of there being a future eternity after we die. When these times of doubt come to mind, I have to remind myself of this true story.
It all started back in World War II during the 1940s. Mary was just a little girl. 
Her dad was a chaplain in the army.
Mary adored her daddy. When he was preaching in his parish church, she had even tried to run down the church aisle to get to him one Sunday. She held her dress up over her head so nobody would see her, but a lady in the front row grabbed her before she could get to the pulpit. When he went overseas, she went to bed sick with a tummy ache and didn't get out of bed until she received a letter from him weeks later. She wrote her first letter to her dad, who was 44 years old, on February 26, 1944 when she was six years old.
Mary received a lot of letters from her daddy too. (song) Daddy's Little Girl
"You will have to take good care of Mother until I can get back home again," wrote her dad. Mary remembered reading those words in many letters she got from her dad. She also remembered what fun she had with him in the years to follow playing the card game, "Hearts". She got to stay up until the wee hours of the morning with her friends when they all played cards with her dad. Mary grew up and got married. She and her husband had ten children of their own; nine grew to adulthood. Over the years, they played many games of "Hearts" with their Candy Granpa, as they called Mary's dad. They would be especially excited when they could 'Stick Granpa with the Queen'! Granpa would grumble that they were ganging up on him to make sure he took the queen of spades and got 13 points against him as the children would all giggle like crazy. It was just before Candy Granpa passed away that Mary made a tape for her mom for Mother's Day. On the tape, she used a song called, "A Daisy A Day." But she changed the words so her children could say things that they remembered most. "A Daisy A Day" (song as sung by the kids)
We remember the Christmases many.
We remember the presents galore.
We remember the boxed ribbon candy
And the laughs when it fell on the floor. (Karolyn)
We remember pajamas all sizes.
We remember the pictures you took.
We remember the summers and sailing
And the water so cold that we shook. (Skotti)
We remember the hideaway attic.
We remember the porch chairs that creaked.
We remember the bluff and the ivy
That we’d get on the bankin’ we creeped. (Chad)
We remember the walks to the store.
We remember the ice cream we bought.
We remember the lobsters and rowing
When the motor would quit at the pot. (Randy)
We remember the beans and the chowder.
We remember the pies you would bake.
We remember the trips to go shopping
Or to pick up the mail or some cake. (Cindy)
We remember the fireplace burning
As we played chess or card games we knew.
We remember the way we would holler
When we stuck that ole Black Queen on you! (Darcy)
We’ll give you a daisy a day dears.
We’ll give you a daisy a day.
We’ll love you until the rivers run still
And the four winds we know blow away.
We remember the fun times were many
In the woods or the sand at the beach.
We remember the love you have shown us
And the ideals you’ve tried hard to teach. (Wendy)
We hope that your years will be many.
We hope that your troubles are few,
For as long as we’re able to remember,
We will always remember you two.
We’ll give you a daisy a day dears.
We’ll give you a daisy a day.
We’ll love you until the rivers run still
And the four winds we know blow away.
Mary's mom told her that her dad had listened to that tape ten times just before he died and his favorite part was where he heard, "We remember the way we would holler when we stuck that ole Black Queen on you!"
A couple of years later, Mary's mom got very ill and a neighbor called Mary to tell her that her mother needed help. Mary drove to Cape Cod and brought her mom back to live with her family for the last six months that her mom was alive. Mary could still hear her dad saying what he had so many times, "You will have to take good care of Mother until I can." With the help of her family and friends, Mary did just that, to the best of her ability. When her mother passed away, Mary's children said their good-byes to Candy Gramma in their home. Then her body was taken back to Cape Cod for a funeral and to be buried next to her husband, Mary's dad. Mary didn't join her brothers and sister at the gathering and luncheon they had arranged for the people attending her mom's funeral after the burial. Instead, she went to visit with her mother's best friend who had been unable to attend the funeral. After that, Mary and her husband headed south on a vacation. Mary couldn't help but wonder if she'd done as her father would have liked and taken care of her mother properly. She wished so much that she could somehow receive some sign that would make her feel she had done all right and pleased her father. Mary and Bob stopped at Virginia Beach and went to have dinner at a restaurant by the ocean. Mary ordered lobster, which was also her mom's favorite dinner. Mary could remember how her dad would take her mom to a place to eat where she could eat at many lobsters as she wanted and she remembered her mom eating 7 of them once! They were only small ones and she had skipped the salad and any other entrees, but she sure had enjoyed those lobsters! The table Mary and Bob were sitting at was a small one, less than a foot and a half in width. When Mary's lobster was served, it was the largest lobster she had ever seen in her life!! It spread across the plate and over the edges and was wider than the table itself!!! She definitely felt her mother had somehow had something to do with such a marvelous treat! Was her mom saying, "Thank you" from the other world? Still, Mary wished for a sign from her dad and she thought about it a lot as they traveled further south on their vacation. It was on a beach on the Atlantic Ocean, just south of Boca Raton, when it happened. Mary and Bob were just sitting on a towel enjoying the salt air and watching the waves. Then Bob asked her if she like to go for a walk along the beach. "What I'd LIKE is a Sign from my Dad that I did OK!" she answered sort of gruffly, as she reluctantly got up to go for a walk along the shoreline with Bob. They had not strolled far when Mary saw it! "Oh my God! There it IS!" Bob only saw the sand and shells and rocks that were surrounding them at first. But then he saw it too, as Mary leaned over to reach for what was sticking straight up from a smooth sand area on the beach. There was absolutely no doubt in either of their minds that Mary's dad was sending her the sign for which she had prayed so reverently. Tears streamed down her eyes as she picked up the only playing card on the beach, the "Queen of Spades."
God Be With You Till We Meet Again.
(Song - Old Rugged Cross ) (Song- You'll Never Walk Alone)
May YOUR EASTER be filled with God's Blessings!
Click on the bunny for another true story.
