Easter Day

For as long as I can remember Easter Sunday has been my favourite day of the entire year. It marked the start of spring which for me symbolized hope and new beginnings.

Growing up at my house, it meant much more. I was raised in the parsonage. Easter was the most important festival in the Christian calendar. It is the commemoration of Jesus' death and his rising from the dead, also known as the resurrection.

Each Easter Day before dawn, my dad would kick us out of bed to attend the sunrise service on Armour Hill in Peterborough, ON. Some Easter days were cold and others were magically warm yet all left me with the feeling of wonder, beauty, and healing. The view of the city was beautiful and the people in our lives at that time were unmatched. I remember the services always ended with the gathered crowd singing “LOW IN THE GRAVE HE LAY”.

The best Easter Days took us to Aunt Edith and Uncle Calvin’s home. As we drove up the Glen Tay road in Perth, ON, we knew that Edith had everything ready for us. As soon as I walked through their door I could smell “home”. She never let me down; she always made her potato salad, salty pork roast, girkens pickles, and beets and, topped it off with her “lazy daisy cake” and raspberry pie. Later, Edith & I would sit together at her kitchen table; drink steeped tea and just talk. I talked with her since I was a child until well into adulthood. She never judged, she listened, she told great stories and parables, she prayed and she loved me unconditionally.

When I was five I made her a plaque from plaster of paris of “the praying hands”. They were awful, the paint job was ugly. Yet she hung it in her front hall and it hung there until she died. I’m sorry Edith, I’m laughing; I never would have hung that plaque in my house. I love her for that. During my teenage years she nicknamed me”Itis” because she thought I was inflamed. When I started nursing, every time I heard a diagnosis that ended in “itis” I would chuckle and think of her.

Edith is with her Saviour this Easter Day. I’ll be up for the sunrise and sing the traditional hymn. Later I’ll host Easter Day for my wonderful family. I won’t make the “lazy daisy cake” or the raspberry pie though, I don’t have Edith’s touch and I want to remember the exact taste like I remember her. I’ll put out the girkens; I don’t think I can do much harm to those.

Happy Easter!