I remember sitting on the couch listening to Cheri…laughter spilling out of my completely happy 16 year-old heart. Don’t you just love people who can make you laugh until you cry?

She would sit on my dad’s overstuffed chair in our family room, legs tucked underneath her, her dark brown eyes bubbled over to the brim with gladness…and a whole Iot of mischief.

It wasn’t just her words, it was her expressive face that sort of pulled you in; made you want to listen. Gaylene would be in one of the big rocking chairs and I would be on the couch; both of us wrapped up in the cozy blankets mom had made during those long evenings the winter before. We would always start talking at a reasonable hour; but the talks inevitably lasted late into the night; one of us finally having the presence of mind to shut the door leading to the dining room, which in turn opened up to the kitchen, living room and bedrooms that lay beyond.

Voices carry, you know, and so does laughter. If we didn’t catch the door in time, we knew what would happen…mom or dad would wake up and a bit grumpily, yet somehow indulgently, tell us “it’s high time the three of you girls were in bed.”

These late night gifts of time – usually enhanced by popcorn and chocolate – were carved out when Cheri was home from Indiana. Having met the love of her life a few years earlier at a small Bible college, Cheri got married while I was still in junior high. She and Morris moved to Indiana soon after his graduation.

As I grew up, Cheri was more of a confidant than a play-mate. There were six of us kids, and Cheri was older than me by seven years; she was someone who could laugh at my fears or silliness, and make me feel better. I remember waking up from a terrible dream one night…I must have been 5 or 6 at the time. Her room was right next to mine and I went running in, saw her sitting on her bed and she reached for me as I scrambled up. She just sat there and held me, her arms wrapped completely around me and her chin on the top of my head. So sweet! Her love chased away whatever I was afraid of and I knew, nestled there, that I was safe.

Growing up on a farm meant that there were plenty of chores to go around. Some of mine included keeping my room tidy (not my strong suit back then because I kept everything!), helping with laundry, feeding the baby calves – so cute! – and drying the dishes. Cheri washed the dishes and Gaylene and I dried them. I remember standing beside her in momma’s pretty kitchen…the window above the sink open and the evening breezes coming through. A lot of silliness got taken care of on those evenings…along with the dishes. I would always reach quickly to dry my favorite: a little yellow bowl with tiny white polka dots…. Momma made sure I got that adorable little dish for oatmeal in the morning, mashed potatoes at dinner and home-made ice cream when daddy made it on the back porch. Clearing the table and washing the dishes may not have been our favorite thing to do, but Cheri made it fun.

She wasn’t perfect. She was sometimes impatient, sometimes sarcastic. She could say more with a roll of her eyes and a lift of her eyebrows than most people can say with a vocabulary full of adjectives. Her daughter, Mandi, has this same expressive characteristic…which makes me laugh whenever I see it.

As I grew up and went away to college, our visits were a bit more limited. We caught up via letters, had hilarious conversations over the phone and I loved the times she and Morris came home or we went to Indiana. I missed her! I still have some of the notes that she wrote me…physically tucked away in a box, and protectively tucked away in my memory.

Cheri came home and stayed nearly a month the year my little brother graduated from high school. She and Mandi flew in to celebrate and spent an extended vacation with us. After landing in Wichita, she told us that as they crossed into Kansas, she saw the gold of the prairie wheat fields from the air. It was so familiar and homey that it made her cry. (You can take the girl out of Kansas…)

Morris stayed in Indiana due to church commitments, but drove out for the last week or so of the month. They left in mid-June and daddy got sick a few weeks later. After a few appointments and a short hospital stay, our family physician recommended that he be taken to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita. Our initial phone calls to Indiana told Cheri that he would be ok…there would be needed healing and physical therapy, but she didn’t need to come back to Kansas. Dad would recover and be back home soon enough.

The night of July 18th, a man in his 20’s got off work and made the decision to stop for a drink on the way home. He ordered one drink after another…and didn’t stop for hours. I have no idea why…maybe he was out with friends for a good time; maybe he was trying to chase away sadness or pain or despair.

What I do know is that by the time he got into his car to drive home, he had no cognitive ability left with which to gage distances or make the decisions needed to drive from one point on a map to another. He could no longer even fully realize where he was at a given moment. In the early morning hours of July 19th, he met my Cheri, Morris and sweet baby Mandi on a highway outside of Shelbyville, Indiana and changed entire families for ever.

Isn’t it strange? He broke my heart in that instant, and I didn’t even know it.
I was sound asleep. In the months to come, I remember wondering how that was possible. How can you be so completely unaware, even in sleep, of life-altering events like that?

Cheri and Morris had decided to surprise all of us – they had told no-one of their plans to show up at Wesley Medical Center with hugs, laughter and encouragement in the form of themselves. Awakened by the telephone ringing, I stumbled out of bed early that Friday morning to get to the phone…worried immediately about daddy. But, it was Cheri, not daddy that bright, beautiful morning in July who was the reason for the call. While we slept, our beautiful sister had switched places…in a matter of moments she went from somewhere outside Indianapolis to the Eternal City…and became a fellow-inhabitant with the saints in light.

Kind, funny, gracious Cheri. Suddenly and unexpectedly safe in the arms of Jesus.

Her transport was the result of decisions made the evening before by someone none of us even knew.
Morris was badly injured; when he realized there wasn’t time enough left to avoid the on-coming vehicle, he turned the car so that his side would take the main impact of the hit. Mandi was safe…she had minor injuries, but she was ok. The haunting and lingering confusion in the brown eyes Cheri had given her were the lasting legacy of the events of that morning…until the blessed passage of time and the love of another sweet, sweet momma a few years later, helped wash that away.

The rest of that morning was a blur…mom and dad were in Wichita, Gaylene, my younger brother, Don, and I were home. We had planned to spend the day in Wichita, then head home for our summer jobs over the weekend. Instead, we met our older brother and sister at Wesley, who had the awful, heartbreaking task of telling our parents what had happened.

Arrangements for an unexpected trip to Indiana were made; but someone needed to stay with daddy. He wouldn’t be dismissed from the hospital for at least a week, so somewhere, somehow, the decision was made for me to remain with him.

There’s a little chapel in Wesley Medical Center. It’s a holy little place, sanctified by the joys, sorrows and prayers of countless people who have found their way to that quiet, peaceful bit of space….petitioning God on behalf of those they love. We added ours to it a day or so later. Since Daddy couldn’t travel to the service for Cheri in Indiana, we had a little service for her there. That little chapel was packed to the corners with people who loved us and wanted to share their strength and love and hearts with us. By the next morning, with the exception of daddy and me, my entire family was on their way to Indiana.

Daddy and I fielded call after call, kind visitor after kind visitor in a steady…and seemingly endless…line of love and care and wordless sympathy.

I don’t have a name to go with my image of the man who drove the car that night. I know I was told his name repeatedly at the time; I read newspaper accounts of the accident and of course there was a trial. But somehow, his name never stayed with me. Maybe that’s best.

I’ve wondered about him over the years, though. What a terrible knowledge to carry forward. His erratic driving had been reported by others traveling that stretch of the Indiana interstate; State Police had set up roadblocks, trying to clear the highway before the unthinkable happened. When it did, he was taken to the hospital, where he was treated for superficial injuries. He was arrested the moment he was released, and after the trial, spent the next 5 years of his life in prison.

You know, there isn’t language for pain like this; but then I don’t think there’s language that truthfully or adequately portrays any pain of the human heart. Tears speak for us then. Shakespeare’s quote about the eyes being a window to the soul rings true here. It just makes sense that the Wisdom who created souls in the first place would give us a release for matters too deep, too profound for words.

Words can be beautiful, but they’re limited. Tears are not. And isn’t it just like Him to remind us that He bottles those tears, never forgetting even one?

While at Wesley, with my grieving and wonderfully kind daddy, I kept one eye on the huge window in his room which overlooked the intersection of Central and Hillside Streets. I knew my family would come down that road when they returned. Irrational you may think, but during the days my family was in Indiana, I lived in constant fear that something would happen to all of them… If Cheri could be taken, anything terrible was possible.

The beautiful ones all came back – walking down the brown carpeted hallway at Wesley to dad’s room – which was bathed in the soft twilight of a summer evening by the time they got there. Tired faces showed just what the previous days had cost them.

We loved my dad through his recovery and we loved each other through our common heartbreak. We looked at each other with a new, tender, and profound gratefulness. We held each other a little tighter, we said “I love you” a little more often, we listened a little more carefully. We knew how suddenly things can happen.  There was no longer any room for carelessness.

We were wiser now. But, oh, that wisdom had come at a price.

Maybe that’s why I hug everybody. The people all around me mean the world to me now. Everything…everything can be replaced except the amazing people God gives you to learn well and love well and do your life with. Look around you…you have it too; this collection of priceless treasures in jars of clay.

Guard them well. And be grateful. They’re masterpieces…every single one of them. Even the ones who exasperate us and try our patience have nuance, mystery and something “other worldly” about them. Like us, they are made for something deeper, something ‘further on’.

For years after Cheri went Home, I wished her back with an ache impossible to describe. God graciously took the sharp edges off that pain eventually…although I still want to stay up late and laugh with her; to find out what she thinks about so many things…some important, some trivial.
But, of course I know what she would say to me; with that still familiar tilt of her pretty, pretty head and a little laugh…

“You know I can’t do that. So stop it. Go on…get busy until it’s your turn.”

Yes, ma’am. I will.