When I was growing up, I had an aunt living next door to us who used to preface everything she intended to do by saying: “If I’m spared and the Lord tarries.” A deeply religious woman, she, along with many of her faith, fervently believed in the eminent coming of her Lord. She lived each day of her life in preparation for His return. Not with a morbid sense of dread that many of us have, but with a sense of joy and expectation of an event that she had lived all her life in readiness for. As a young girl growing up in a small outport, how often do I remember her saying, “I think we’ll go berry picking tomorrow, if we’re spared and the Lord tarries.” To us youngsters who dreaded the second-coming with all our youthful passions, it seems to stall the event a bit by her repeating the phrase. Here was a woman, who enjoyed life to its fullest, busy and active with two small children who genuinely longed for the coming of the Lord. But though she walked closely with God, and prayers and mediations came first, she always had time to participate fully in this life, and was always planning parties for us children, berry-picking expeditions and just generally making our mundane lives more exciting by her creativity and zest for life. Many a noon-hour lunch was made special in the summertime when Aunt Flora would call out to my mother and, together, they would spread a cloth on a little hill by our house and an ordinary meal would become special because we were all together eating outdoors. Our two houses were very close together, and with both my father and my uncle away working during the spring and summer months, both the families’ lives were intricately intertwined. We always looked to Aunt Flora for advice, and her no-nonsense explanations of everything dispelled all our fears of ghosts and goblins and everything bad. Her very nature led us to believe there wasn’t anything under the sun to be afraid of. I’ll always remember the summer thunder storms when we would all come rushing into her house, our hearts beating wildly, thinking the sky was crashing down, or at the very worst the Lord had finally come. She would soothe away our fears with syrup and cookies, and we would sing hymns until the clouds had rolled over and the sun came out again. One wonders how she made time for us with all her other duties. Besides her ordinary work, the ministers always stayed at her house when they came to hold service on Sundays, and the school teachers all boarded at her place, too. Her passion for renovating is a thing that stands out in my mind and was rare in a women of her era. In the spring when my mother and the other women of the community were content to clean and dust, Aunt Flora had an overwhelming urge to move walls and doors. You’d see her up at the crack of dawn with hammer and saw moving a wall between the pantry and porch, making one large and the other smaller and back to its original position in the fall. Sometimes it was confusing to us until we got used to it, and we often went into the pantry thinking we were going outdoors. Chopping up firewood and hauling water from the well were everyday chores when the men were away for so long during the year, and her work for her church and community was equaled by no one in our community. But it is not for all this that I remember her the most. It was for the optimistic and practical approach she took to life. No job was too arduous or too long, no problem that wouldn’t be solved. Even though we didn’t always appreciate it at the time, her attitude has gone on to affect the lives of all those who knew her, especially those of us whose childhoods she made so much fun. She died a few years ago and, at her funeral, the church filled to the doors with relatives and friends. As I looked across the church at her casket, I looked back over her 80 some years and thought of all that energy and vitality stilled forever. No more berry picking, no more renovation, no more picnics on the hill. How I wished I could hear her say once more: “we’re going on an outing tomorrow, if I’m spared and the Lord tarries.”   Submitted By: NULL