Unexpected Phone Calls

Unexpected phone calls… we all get them. You’re at work and you get a call… Your dad has cancer and has only 12 months to live. You’re at work and you get a call… your wife has been in a bad car accident… come quick. You’re sitting on the couch watching TV and get a call from Ray Torno… Linda just collapsed and died.

We moved here in 1982 and Ray and Linda were already members here. We don’t miss services very often and neither do they. So for forty years we have seen them three times a week. When we moved here in 1982 and rented a house Linda took her kids and went over and cleaned the place up for us before we moved in. She didn’t even know us. So many little individual acts of kindnesses that when tallied together equal a heart bursting with love. We’ve attended all the funerals of dear and old friends with Ray and Linda. All the baby showers. All the wedding showers. All the picnics. All the social gatherings.

Linda taught our kids and grandkids. After class she would come up to us and brag on them and tell us how much she loved them and how special they were. She truly had a gift for teaching and rarely took a quarter off.

She and her work with the “kiddos” helped make Parkway special.

I was talking with Julie the other week and told her… you know… one of us is going to get sick and our health is going to fail and one of us is going to have take care and to bury the other. It almost seems to me that the easier part is on the one whose health fails compared to the one who has to watch the person he loves the most in the world decline and fade away.

I told her… I hope you don’t have to take care of me

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It’s a time to mourn and reflect and we need this time. Linda is in a far, far better place and my guess is that she’ll find all the kiddos up there and love them with all her heart. Rest in peace Linda… we miss and love you.

Thank God we won’t be getting any unexpected phone calls in Heaven.

Please pray and be there for my old friend Ray Torno