An Amazing Matriarch

My mother, Roberta Buckley, died at 97 on July 12. I was able to have dinner with her and pray with her several times when I was on a ministry trip to California in June. She had been getting weaker, but she still loved life and enjoyed a constant stream of visitors to her home. A few weeks later, her internal organs began to fail.

I flew in the day before she died. All that day and the next morning her eight children, their spouses, and many of her 35 grandchildren and great grandchildren came into her bedroom to hug and kiss her and thank her for the love she gave them. We cried because it was hard for us to let her go.

My mother went to work full time as a social worker after our dad left her in 1969. The clients she served reminded her of the challenges she faced at home. She retired after 20 years and dedicated the rest of her life to serving, loving, and providing for our family.

She competed at bridge with friends and enjoyed meals and movies, but her biggest joy was giving attention to whoever wanted to talk with her. Her superpower was caring deeply about people. She knew people open their hearts to those who care about them.

In John 15, Jesus said we glorify God when we bear much fruit. He also said, we will all be fruitful if we simply abide in him. My mom had eight children because the Catholic Church taught that it was pleasing to God to skip birth control and have as many children as God provided. As a new Catholic, she obeyed this teaching and one child followed another.

When my dad left her, she felt profound rejection. She didn’t know what she had done wrong. She thought God and the church had let her down. I tried to assure her many times that it was not her fault her husband left. He was searching for meaning, purpose and fun and losing his soul with other women in the process. He left his faithful wife and big family and ended up profoundly depressed.

My mother was forty-five years old, beautiful and intelligent, but she felt like a failure. In her pain, she continued to do the right things. She worked hard as a social worker. She opened her home to our friends as well as hitchhikers we brought by. She cooked, cleaned, and tried to support her children as we navigated through the turbulent times of the 60s and 70s.

Most of her children began to open their lives to Christ starting with me in 1970. Our Father in Heaven began to heal our hearts and help us love and forgive one another. Even our dad accepted Christ before he died in 2003. Our family went from being a mess to being blessed. My mom lived long enough to see God’s grace manifest in the lives of her children. Her later years were full of joy.

Our family has been rocked by death, disease, divorce, and dysfunction at various times. But we have also experienced resurrection grace. In our midst we had a mother who loved and prayed for each of us, no matter how messed up we were at the time. She took the long view. She couldn’t fix us, but she knew her role was to keep loving, serving, and accepting us. She trusted God to do the rest.

I saw her cry many times, but I never heard her swear even once. However, if she drank too much, she might say mean things. Like all Christians, she was saved by the grace of God which comes through Jesus Christ, not her own perfection.

The morning after mom’s death, I woke up early and was very sad as I sat at her kitchen table. My mother had lived in that house for 68 years and now she was gone. I opened my Bible at random to Isaiah 64:1. “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down…” I felt heaven in that moment. I could sense mom’s spirit and the presence of the Lord as I gazed into the open room. For a few seconds, the Holy Spirit pushed away the separation between heaven and earth. I know she is alive with the Lord.

Jesus said, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted (Matthew 5:4).