The Lady with Two Birthdays

My brother tells the story of inviting our Mom to go with his family on a trip to Canada. At the time, Canada didn’t require a passport from US citizens but did require two forms of identification. Mom’s birth certificate and driver’s license would suffice.

Only, when Mom found her birth certificate, she realized her driver’s license indicated her birthday was September 19th, while her birth certificate said September 12th.

Apparently, the county ordinary who filed Mom’s birth certificate made an error that was never corrected. Mom shared she didn’t secure a birth certificate until she turned 16 and needed it to apply for a summer job. That’s when she learned that, though her family celebrated September 19th, her legal birthday was September 12th.

The family never got her birth certificate corrected, so she lived with two birthdays. I often kidded her that she was technically twice as old as her real age. When we celebrated her 99th birthday in September, I told her she looked great for 198!

We lost her one month later, October 22.

I’m sure I could list 500 reasons I’m thankful God blessed me and my three brothers with Gladys Harris Chancey as our mom. Here are a few:

*I’m thankful for her faith. She loved the Lord and His church, and my parents taught us to love the Lord and His church. We were three-times-a-week church goers, and both my parents were involved and invested in every church we belonged to growing up. At home, both parents lived out their faith and did all they could to point us to the time we each received Jesus as Savior.

*I’m thankful for her family. Mom was one of eight children born to her family raised on a farm in Upson County, Georgia. They lost two preschoolers along the way, but the remaining six and eventually their spouses remained close through the years.

When Mom was hospitalized and recovering from surgery earlier this year, she said many times, “If my sisters were here, they’d be right here with me.”

*I’m thankful for her convictions. When I was in seventh grade, several friends told me they were getting mini-bikes for Christmas. I asked for one. Since I had not turned 16 and didn’t have a driver’s license, I didn’t get one. Right was right and wrong was wrong and they would not let me break the law.

*I’m thankful for her impartiality. Mom never showed favoritism and bent over backwards to treat each son equally. One local business in our hometown of Milledgeville would deliver a container of chocolate covered nuts to her each Christmas season. I have a picture of her sitting at the dining room table carefully counting out those nuts, dividing them equally. I think we got 17 each.

*I’m thankful my parents modeled a loving marriage. They didn’t have a perfect marriage, but we boys knew they loved each other. My dad was taken way too young at age 67, but they had 41 good years together. It wasn’t always easy, but they exemplified for us what it means to be committed to one another for life.

*I’m thankful for her courage and strength. Two years ago, she met a cancer diagnosis head-on and did what she had to do to get better. She tried her best to bounce back from two major surgeries since May, followed by two intense rehabs.

She never gave up, but, physically, she ran out of steam. Through it all, she leaned on the Lord and His strength, pressing on with great faith.

One of the verses she wrote down in the flyleaf of her Bible was Psalm 73:26 — “My mind and my body may grow weak, but God is my strength; He is all I will ever need” (GNT). She lived out that verse until she peacefully left us.

On that day, she didn’t make it to her recliner where she sat and worked crossword puzzles two days prior. She stayed in her bed all day. Early that evening, the sitter asked, “Miss Gladys, would you like to read some scripture?”

Mom replied, “Yes.”

Joyce read Psalm 23 while holding Mom’s hand. She finished, closed the Bible, turned to place it on the nightstand, turned back to Mom, and Mom was gone.

The last words Mom heard on this side of eternity were, “And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” And now she is.

(David L. Chancey lives in Fayetteville, Georgia, and serves as transitional pastor at Griffin Church, Griffin, Georgia).