Life is hard, but we are blessed by those who show us love, at our best when we pass it on. In 2023, my 86-year-old mother finished a book. It was a remarkable book, entitled “Heavenly Music, Light, and Fragrance: One Man’s Journey to Heaven,” retelling how she and her husband of 25 years, her beloved Berne, navigated the final years of his life.
Her lessons came in simple chapters, reflecting good times, then the evolution of health and how they managed that evolution with humor, flexibility toward one another, and deepening faith.
In detail, based on journal entries over three years, she wrote about “ordinary people with an extraordinary story” of faith, fortitude, and love. Per the Bible, “The greatest of these is love.”
In 230 pages, she took readers on a shared journey, perhaps one day ours. Her book, having just reread it, is clear, and uplifting, about faith. In a moment of despair, it lifted me, just as she intended.
The short is that Berne, always a strong man, wonderful singer, jazz musician, accomplished teacher, professional plumber, and father of four wonderful kids that he himself raised, met my mother nearly 30 years ago, with four children she raised largely alone … one day at church.
From small acorns do mighty oaks grow, and theirs did. They talked, sang, and walked beaches together, became soulmates, as if – after adversity – God gave them each other, love and faith.
They traveled together, my mother a retired, four-decade teacher and watercolor artist, Berne a professional plumber who was also an artist, craftsman, and honest, cheerful soul to his core.
My mother would paint everywhere they went, and he would then mat her pictures, frame them, adore them, and in that – and in all ways and at all times – he adored her, as she adored him.
But time passes, too fast. When he became sick, starting a gradual process of decline, he chose humor and lightness, music and faith over self-pity. He lived for her, and she for him.
Contrary to what you might think, they grew closer and their faith grew. They met challenges as one, not separately, and felt added love with changing needs and responsibilities.
On more than one occasion, they felt a closeness to God that neither had felt before, miracles occurring over and over, and my mother recording them all, in as much detail as life allowed.
When things seemed dark, those troths of life between crests, they were taken by what seemed impossible outcomes, blessings that guided, lifted, and reaffirmed them, the way battlefield warriors are often guided to some truth, and lifted by it.
People appeared in their lives who were angelic, who made possible the impossible and offered meaningful comfort, accompanied by what seemed real angels, a gathering of the heavenly host.
When Berne finally departed her, taken by circumstance, not wishing to leave her, it was after three years of reaffirmed love for each other, in all adversity, and with a clear love of God.
That is why, after the loss began to be digested, she felt – call it divine intervention – a need to share what no book seemed willing to share, details and high points of one’s last journey.
What she knew was that they had not taken that trip alone. Needed was a book to help others understand, navigate, and accept. To many, the ideas conveyed may cause a nod, to others wonder.
In April 2021, after all was done, she wrote, “I have come to believe that God is in control even though we think we are. We want to be, but He is the one who guides us through our lives. We pray and often He answers our prayers which makes us grateful. Sometimes our prayers are not answered, but there may be a reason we do not know why they are not answered. Something better may be in store for us… If we allow God to guide us, we become happier …”
Backed by hard life experience, if her sentiments ring a bell, they should. Her book is a wonder because it validates the truth and reward, here and Beyond of living by faith. It teaches a reader how to navigate the approach to death, especially the death of a loved one.
This week, unexpectedly, I discovered that her truth is not just comforting, it is profoundly instructive; her insights and faith teach, her words plainly given by a loving God, for me to reread.
This past week, without warning, after longing for Berne and life in alignment with all she wrote in her loving, lovely, giving, priceless book, we lost her. While the shock remains, I write because my mother wrote, and in writing she offered comfort, a comfort worth conveying.
The truth is we lost her to her loving God, who called her home, who must need her – angel among angels – more than we do here, although that seems impossible… and where she is with Berne.
In Corinthians 13: 4-13, Saint Paul writes “Now these three remain, faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” She lived that core truth, knew that truth, painted with it, wrote with it, and never lost it, so we would know it.
She wrote a book that comforts me now, helping me understand my own loss of her. Life is hard, but we are blessed by those who show us love and are at our best when we do that too. She was the centering force in my life, my blessed mother; and her love will live forever.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
