Our Responsibility

 This post by Stephen Harrell Jr. appeared on Facebook this morning:

Nobody tells you when you’re a kid that one random Sunday at Grandma’s house will eventually be the last time everyone is there at the same time.

The kids are running in and out of the house.

Somebody’s yelling, “STOP SLAMMING THAT DOOR!”

The adults are sitting around the kitchen table talking about things you couldn’t care less about.

There’s food everywhere.

Someone is asleep in a recliner.

You can hear the TV from the other room.

You’re bored half the time and begging to go home.

And you have absolutely no idea that you are standing inside a memory you will spend the rest of your life wishing you could walk back into.

Then everybody grows up.

The cousins move away.

People get married.

Families get busy.

Grandparents get older.

The house gets sold.

Some people stop speaking.

Some people are no longer here.

And suddenly you’d give just about anything to sit at that kitchen table for ten more minutes and hear everybody’s voices coming from different rooms.

The older I get, the more I realize…

We weren’t “just going to Grandma’s house.”

We were going to the one place where our entire family still belonged to each other.

And somehow none of us realized it was temporary.

If you had a house like that growing up, you were richer than you knew

Well, I happened upon this as I sipped my coffee this morning, and suddenly a flood of memories washed over me. Houses, rooms, tables crowded with people, familiar voices, laughter, and faces I haven't seen in years. Some of those faces I will never see again, at least in this life.

Mama Shaw's house nowadays.

The family poses for a Christmas picture in the last fifties at Mama Shaw's house.

Feasting at Mama Shaw's

Feasting at Mama Shaw's

Mama Shaw’s little house in Milstead, Georgia, bursting at the seams with the families of her five boisterous boys. 

Mama Baird's house as it looks these days.

Mama Baird cutting one of her huge cakes.

Mama Baird with eight of her grandchildren

Mama Baird with eight of her eleven children

Sixteen miles away, at 45 Hazel Street in Porterdale, my other grandmother’s house, filled with the nine of her eleven children who lived to adulthood, and what seemed like an endless supply of cousins.

Then all those parsonages I grew up in, from Adams County, Ohio, to Jessamine and Washington counties in Kentucky, to Spalding, Gilmer, Floyd, and Fulton counties in Georgia. Each one home to our family for a season, as we children grew up and eventually began making homes of our own.

And what memories live in those later homes of my brother and sisters, and in the places Mama called home in her later years! The family scattered, the gatherings changed, but the bonds remained.

And the houses that welcomed me into a whole new family in 1971, in Tallahassee and Quincy, Florida, and Headland, Alabama. New faces, new stories, new people to love.

There were the homes of dear friends that became second homes to us. At least four different Burton houses in Rome and Booger Hollow. The Greears on Mount Alto. The Franklins in East Rome. Doors that were always open, tables where there was always room for one more, friendships that became part of the fabric of our lives.

And, of course, our own homes. Our little cabin on Lake Creek, the bungalow on Cedar Avenue, and this big old house where, after all the years of children and sleepovers, comings and goings, laughter and commotion, it's usually just the two of us now.

The hardest thing about living to seventy-nine, I think, is accepting that the world is peopled a little differently with every passing year. The houses may still stand, but the people who made them home are changing. So many of those dear faces are gone now. Yet I can still hear their voices, walk through those rooms in my memory, and almost pull up a chair to join the conversation around those crowded tables.

And I find myself wondering what those who came before us would think of the world we are leaving to those who come after us.

I am profoundly grateful for all those people—family, friends, former students, fellow church members, neighbors—who helped make my world a better place. They gave me love, encouragement, opportunity, and the blessings of liberty that I have enjoyed throughout my life. Many of them lived through hard times, made sacrifices, and worked to leave this country a little better than they found it.

I hope I have done, and will continue to do, my part to pass those blessings along. I hope the generations coming after us will inherit not only our houses and possessions, but a country worthy of the hopes and sacrifices of those who came before.

And so, on this Election Day, with all those faces and memories crowding my mind, I have one simple request.

Please vote.

Vote with gratitude for those who came before us, with love for those who share this world with us today, and with hope for those who will come after us.

Our time here is fleeting. Our responsibility to the future is not.

And this precious Republic of ours is worth the effort.