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The Journey Home What is it about the land of western Minnesota? It is so flat and expansive, painfully authentic, and heartbreakingly beautiful. A long time […]

My sister and I are sitting with our mother in her hospice room. She lies in bed dressed in a hospital gown that ties at the back. The bed is upright so that she can visit with us. It is a hot, humid Minnesota day that arrives with a televised warning. I hold my mother’s hand during idle chat that amounts to nothing. Periodically, I lift a straw to her mouth so that she can have a sip of coffee. We are simply passing the time together, knowing that it’s limited.

I never would have signed up for this. Not that I’m against it, it’s just so far out of my range of experience. At the end of August, my neighbor called: “Edie, is there any chance you would be willing to host a foreign exchange student? There are six students hoping to come to America; they need a placement in the next five hours.” Given five months, I would’ve had a laundry list, alphabetical, of all my reasons to decline. I told her I would think about it. This was my way of having a bit more time to compose a graceful “no.” When I hung up the phone, I really had to ask myself: what are my reasons? My former husband and I didn’t have children. We were busy with our professional lives. As the years went by, it simply ceased to be a topic of our conversation. When our twenty-year marriage ended, we were both silently grateful we’d never become parents.

Let me be clear from the start: I don’t win things. Consequently, when I buy a raffle ticket I do so in an effort to support the cause, not because I expect my name to be drawn. I don’t even harbor a subtle hope. Quite frankly, I hardly see the need for my contact information. So, you might imagine my surprise when I received a phone call that I had won the grand raffle prize. I had attended the annual Scandinavian Food Fair at The First English Lutheran Church in Ortonville. This annual celebration has been going on for nearly forty years. The event includes Norwegian music, crafts, arts, traditional Scandinavian baked goods, a lefse demonstration room, and a luncheon that could grace the cover of any culinary magazine. Hundreds of people attended. Hundreds of people bought a raffle ticket for the mouthwatering prize: a four-foot high, traditional Norwegian wedding cake.

For many years I struggled to face a deep truth: my long-term marriage needed to end. I have prided myself on my ability to recycle and repair almost anything. Growing up in poverty, I learned how to reuse other people’s castoffs, whether that was clothing, furniture or even old cars. Over my lifetime this ability has been very valuable. I have redesigned draperies from estate sales, repainted old lamps with chipped plaster, and restrung broken necklaces. In addition, I have taken pride in repairing any relationship with frayed or tattered edges. Over the last five years I applied all these skills to our marriage: I tried to redesign it, mend the holes with a needle and thread, and restring our good memories. I must admit, this required all of my know-how and a significant amount of energy. On a very deep level I fought against my inner knowing: our marriage was simply not repairable.