An Easter Story

Easter weekend. We have bags of miniature peanut butter cups and Snickers ready to fill the 150 plastic Easter eggs that Bob will hide in our yard for the egg hunt. We’ll put all the leaves in the table today, set up every card table and folding chair, and get out the best china for the dinner for 26 tomorrow.

Easter has become my favorite holiday over the years because we always host the family gathering, including an egg hunt here in Madison County. One niece is bringing Sweet Petals, the extra-special coffee cake that my mom always made at Christmas. A friend will bring her traditional Easter lemon bars. My nephew and his wife are bringing their famous corn casserole.

Tomorrow, my almost eleven-month-old great nephew Burton will have his first egg hunt at our place. An entire generation of nephews and nieces has grown up with egg hunts here. And except for the two Covid years when we gathered by Zoom—and last year, when it snowed—the Easter egg hunt has been a measure of growing up, just like marking kids’ heights on the kitchen wall.

I love this about Easter. Beyond the pretty plates and pastel eggs and wondering whether the grass in our yard will be as green as the plastic grass in the baskets, it reminds me of what the holiday is really about—new life, new possibilities, knowing that we are part of a universe that’s ever expanding and changing, and we each have a part in it.

So I’m going to get spiritual here, no surprise.

My sister Kathy passed away almost two years ago from ovarian cancer. She struggled for three years as the cancer coursed through her body, eventually to her brain. By her side every minute was her husband Dan, a Viet Nam vet who went into sergeant mode and was determined to help her beat the cancer.

I’ll never forget when the two of them were on their way to Iowa City for one of her surgeries, and they both sounded upbeat. “I’m going to get her through this,” he said. He was still the officer, protecting the people he loved.

In the end, her cancer took over, and no amount of might or will or prayer could change it. She slipped away May 21, 2021.

When they married—at the Little Brown Church in the Vale in Nashua, Iowa—Dan promised Kathy two things: he’d fix a candlelight supper for her once a week. And he’d give her flowers every month. He made good on both those promises for nineteen years.

Nineteen years.

For the last week of her life, Kathy was cared for at home, surrounded by a collection of angels she and Dan had gathered over the years.

Then, six months after Kathy passed away, Dan was diagnosed with cancer—maybe an expression of the grief he still feels so acutely over losing Kathy. That’s the thing about illness. We don’t necessarily know where it comes from or what it’s for. But there’s no doubt that Kathy and Dan are still together.

A couple of weeks ago, he was watching an episode of NCIS that included their favorite song. As he heard the melody, he felt the pain of missing her. And then he smelled Kathy’s perfume—the perfume he bought her every year. He smelled it as though she was in the room with him. I have no doubt she was. 

Kathy was and still is a gentle and patient soul. I see her waiting, preparing, being by Dan’s side as he goes through cancer, comforting him in all the ways that she can. We may not be able to hear her, but the message is loud and clear: “I’m going to get him through this.”

When we were little, Kathy made elaborate Easter craft projects for me—a cardboard train with cars filled with candy, a thatched-roof house with chicks by the front door. Four years older than I, she hid them in the house and then set up scavenger-hunt clues for me to find them. And when I did, they were eye-popping. I remember opening the pull-down desk of the secretary in our front entryway, revealing the thatched-roof house sitting on a bed of Easter grass. It literally took my breath away.

My sister Kathy, brothers Bob and Jim, and me holding the thatched-roof house Kathy made.

Life is like that. Follow the clues, go where we’re guided, and celebrate the extraordinary gifts. Sometimes the guidance comes from what we can see and touch. And sometimes it comes from something or someone we can only feel in our hearts.

So while Dan is struggling right now, I know Kathy is preparing something wonderful for him. Back here, we’ll keep marking the growth charts and eating the Sweet Petals and filling baskets with plastic eggs. And hopefully we can remember the mantra we used during those years when Easter was on Zoom instead of in person:

“We are all in this together.”

I’m pretty sure Kathy is right there by Dan’s side, offering a resounding “Yes.”

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