Lucky Dip Number 24
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Mary
My cousin and I met and spoke for the first time when I was nearing fifty and she a decade older for her parents had emigrated to America before I was born. Her daughter had died in a car accident when only nineteen and while I knew what had happened the pain passed me by for sadly the family were names to me then and little more. But on a visit with her husband to our home in Scotland our eyes met across the table and tears came into mine as she told my wife and me about the pain of losing Mary those few years before. For three days, she said, she could barely move from where she sat but on the third day she woke with the words of the psalmist* in her mind 'This is the day that the Lord has made we will rejoice and be glad in it'. The words gave her comfort and when we met she could talk freely of Mary while her husband on that stay little mentioned her name but kept a picture of her always in his wallet and they were together when showing us her grave on a reciprocal visit. After the accident they had found strength and been given grace to forgive the boy who had carelessly lost control and crashed while chauffeuring Mary and some other friends home from a party for they decided against seeking legal redress after he came to them with his parents and painfully apologised. This story has a sequel for one of the boy's parents on a flight with an acquaintance of my cousin and her husband said movingly "They gave my son back his life". |
* psalm 118:24
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