A Happy Easter For All/It’s Still Easter!

Another Way for week of April 15, 2022

A Happy Easter For All?

What do you remember about Easter when you were young? For the three girls in our family, there were new dresses—sometimes homemade by mother. When there was more money than time, she bought dresses for us and I remember being very excited by a satiny flowered lavender dress with a large skirt and puffy sleeves. There might have been new shoes and socks in a really good year. Sometimes even hats! My younger brother would sometimes get a new suit (never homemade)—which was usually outgrown by the following year.  

Certainly, we colored Easter eggs—real eggs that were plentiful because we lived on a poultry farm. Mom would save some back for a week or two before Easter to make the eggs easier to peel for making deviled eggs or pickled ones. My oldest sister would help with organizing the cups we put the dye in—older stained or chipped mugs or coffee cups that we kept on a shelf in the basement pantry—and only got them out once a year to dye Easter eggs. It was a messy affair, but by spreading newspapers on the old metal kitchen table, clean up was easier.

We always played “hiding Easter eggs” long before Sunday. Inevitably we’d forget where one or two were hidden and Dad discovered the stinky evidence while mowing many weeks later. Dad and Mom never bought us Easter baskets, a tradition in some families. I think they figured new clothing was enough. We were sometimes given hand-me-down baskets from aunts or friends—so we did have some to play with.

Our most memorable Easter Sunday morning was the Sunday we woke up to our house on fire. It was a roof fire, and Dad was able to mostly get it extinguished before the firemen arrived. But it was a hot mess in an upstairs closet which the chimney bordered. We were late to church, but oh so thankful that the fire wasn’t worse.

This Easter I’m especially remembering my mother and father, now both in a place we call heaven. Whatever it looks like or wherever it is, we know our spirits will be in a place of joy, happiness and love, and somehow in the presence of God and Jesus. Dad died in 2006 on a Sunday morning about three weeks before Easter. He had to walk with a cane the last dozen or so years of his life after being confined to a wheelchair for a period of time. He had been told by Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN that he would never walk again. He worked hard to prove them wrong, advancing to a walker and then just a cane. But, I remember him saying how happy he would be to discard his cane in heaven.

Of course this Easter my siblings and I are certainly thinking much about Mom, who died this past October. I feel she is thrilled to finally be reunited with Dad and so many friends, family, siblings this Easter—and not have to worry about the physical problems that she dealt with in her final years. 

But this season we are distraught by many other presenting problems in Ukraine and bordering countries, in many parts of Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, the Far East. We are burdened and dismayed by the millions of refugees longing for their own homes, pretty clothes, and Easter eggs to paint or hide. Even in our own country, people beset with personal, drug, financial, and family problems, are left on our streets and in homeless shelters.

However we conceive of a future spent in the presence of God, I believe that Christ’s death on the cross—out of his everlasting and deep love for us—has made it possible (in spite of problems and suffering on earth) for all who love Jesus to have an “Easter morning” resurrection. Not literally on Easter, but after death we will be welcomed into the presence of God. Alleluia!  

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At our church, it is the Easter Season–seven Sundays when we sing Easter songs and celebrate as well as reflect on the meanings. What is the practice at your church or congregation, or privately?

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Your Easter memories? Hopes and joys?

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Another Way is a column by Melodie Davis, in syndication since 1987. She is the author of nine books. Another Way columns are posted at FindingHarmonyBlog.com a week after newspaper publication.