In The Spirit Of Thanksgiving: “By and By”

By Dennis R. Edwards
Columnist

One of my favorite Hymns is called “We’ll Understand It Better By and By.”

Heard it for years, sang it more times than I can remember at First Baptist Church, Mahan St. Now I’m loving it even more after my visit to Grandma’s old house on Suffolk’s Smith Street.

It’s been 68 years since Grandma Edwards brought me home in a blanket from old Obici Hospital. I’ve always been grateful for the gift she was to me. But until my return to her house during a recent visit I didn’t realize what kind of gift I might have been to her back in 1956.

Seems I was born a year and a day after my paternal Grandfather Clem Thomas Edwards died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 60. The sometimes cruelty of life and circumstance  struck again when my dad Leroy T. Edwards, Sr. died 5 years later of a different kind of heart attack. Dad was her first born when she was roughly 17 years old in Capron, Va. in 1915. They were the closest of close. I suspect Grandma, Dad and I were cut from the same spiritual cloth, so to speak. Joined, I’m certain, by a faith  bond that still exists today.

After doing some research with the help of a friend I recently discovered a timeline, so to speak, of spiritual and practical proportions. The meaning of which escaped me till now. Seems Grandpa Clem died on September 28, 1955 a year and a day before I was born.

Four years after I got here my dad, Leroy T. Edwards, Sr. suddenly passed away. So I came along within a five-year span that saw Grandma lose her husband and only son. I was born in a period of loss and new life for her. Perhaps in her mind, a way the Lord may have partially compensated her for the losses of the two most important men in her life.

Now I understand why she was so careful about and with me. Why she loved me unconditionally and looked forward to my daily visits as well as just my lingering around the house talking to her.

Sometimes the people in our lives are God’s built-in remedy for the tragic and unexpected losses we are forced to face. Grandma lost the husband she built a life with and the son who was the first fruit of that relationship. In between he placed a grandson in her life who for her may have been a consoling fruit of her irreplaceable losses. A reminder that God hadn’t forgotten her?

To be sure, she certainly treated me that way. Tried to spoil me as much as possible till I realized she couldn’t afford to do that and returned a gift she once gave me I really didn’t need as much as she needed her resources. That was a great moment for us. A moment I wrote about some time ago.

But today I celebrate how God finds a way to make the rougher paths of life a little easier by sending people, children and grandparents to fill those open spaces, created by the seemingly heartless and random moves of death. Mama loved me more than she wanted me to know. But didn’t want it to go to my head. Yet Grandma loved me unashamedly, as much for who I am as for how I may have helped fill a void in her life left by the son who died too soon.

It’s a nice thought to be used that way,  even nicer to be loved that way too. She in turn made my growing up unforgettable for the love she gave me. Can’t say I’ve ever felt more secure, loved and understood than at her table, in her lap in the middle room or on her bed watching TV after coming home from school.

As children we always think about what beloved people in our lives mean to us.  But what may be more meaningful, more precious is what we mean to them and why. My guess is you felt the same way at your Grandma’s house too. I guess it’s true after all we do come to “understand it better by and by!”

Dennis Edwards is a Major Market Emmy and Virginia Associated Press broadcasters award winning TV and WRVA Radio News Anchor, Investigative Reporter, Columnist and Pastor. He is a graduate of Virginia Union University and its Samuel Dewitt Proctor School of Theology.

Copyright November 2024