Redeeming Loss

My great grandmother, on my father’s side, was named Adel Pleimann.  Except for some yellowed photos and 8 mm film taken when I was little, I really have no memory of her.  It does not mean, however, that I do not know something about who she was.

Four generations: My Great Grand Mother Adel, Grand Mother Virgina, Father and Me

When I listen to my father, my uncle Tony, or my Aunt Tina talk about her I get the picture that she was the glue that held the family together.  But before I get to that, let me tell you what little I know about her life.  

Uncle Tony, Aunt Tina, and Great Grandma Adel

She was married to John B. Pleimann, who was better known as “Jack the Diver.”  Back in a time when divers wore suits that weighed hundreds of pounds and the technology made using one a dangerous act, Jack would dive in the Mississippi River, working on the salvage and repair of the boats and barges that made the waterway a channel of commerce.  

 In 1941, at the age of 46, this dangerous job took his life.  

My great grandmother never remarried.  Instead she moved in with her daughter, Virginia.  When my Grandfather left my Grandma Virginia, Great Grandma Pleimann helped her to raise her two boys.  When Virginia got remarried to Tony and had two more children, Great Grandma, stayed with them and continued to support the family.

From everything I can gather, she did more than help out, she was the foundation upon which the family was built.  When my father and his siblings talk about her presence they tell how they felt completely loved by her.  Her love extended to the house and she helped to make it a home, bring order and stability to what could be at times a chaotic environment.  She was the rock which gave their home stability.  What a great legacy.

Grandma Adel and Aunt Tina

It is not surprising, when she died, the home was not nearly as stable and chaos crept in.   My Grandmother in her grief, like many before her, began to collect things in order to try and fill the void left by loss of her mother Adel.  While she might not classify in the strictest sense as a hoarder, there is no doubt that she was dealing with her grief with stuff, and that stuff filled the house.

When Grandma Virgina died in 2008, the task of helping her husband Tony clean out the house fell to my Aunt Tina (The title Aunt is a little misleading because she is only a year older than me).  Tina had grown up in the home and had seen her mother accumulate a lot of the stuff that now filled it.  She had also lived through the changes that took place after of Great Grandma’s death.  For her, I imagine this process was more than cleaning out rooms; it was also a journey back to her childhood and the memories that filled it.

When just a few years later, Grandpa Tony (Tina’s dad), passed away she was left to finish cleaning out the rest of the house.  Whatever was not dealt with when Grandma died was now processed.  This included both the possessions that remained and the memories that filled the house.  I am sure it was both hard and healing.

On a recent trip to Nashville I was able to have dinner with my Aunt Tina, a couple of days later I went to visit her home and place of business.  She lives on the main square of an old historic town just outside of Nashville.  Tina has an artistic flare which is evidenced by her home, which is beautiful.  It has just the right balance of art, warm colors, light and clean lines.  You would never know she grew up in the home of a woman who was a borderline hoarder.

Across the square is Tina’s shop.  She owns an antique store and consignment shop, but this is only part of her life’s work.  She also helps people liquidate estates when someone has died and the family desires to sell of what is left of their earthly possessions. While this is how she makes a living, Tina thinks of it as a ministry. As you can imagine, when Tina enters a home she encounters more than just a bunch of stuff, she is meeting a family in grief. She is there to help those she serves not only process the possessions that remain, but also the grief that they are feeling.  An opportunity I am not sure her mother ever had.

It struck me as I was standing in Tina’s store, looking at the objects that filled it, thinking about the families she has befriended in their time of loss, and looking at her, God has been so faithful in Tina’s life to redeem even hard things for great good.

I do not think when her mother was saving, collecting, and purchasing all the things that filled her home, Tina could have seen how living there and learning to understand her mom would help her to connect to the people she now serves.  I do not think that she could have seen how the process of going through the possessions left by her own parents would teach her what she would need to know to help families when they find themselves in a similar circumstance, and I am quite sure she never imagined the ministry that she would be given, which would grow out of her own family’s grief.

It was grief born when Jack the Diver died, it grew when my grandfather abandoned his family, and was fully matured when my Great Grandmother passed on.  These are only the big losses, there are probably a handful or two of others that I know nothing about.  Even thought these may amount to a big pile of losses, it is not big enough to be out of the realm of God’s ability to redeem them, and in the process having grief turn into joy.

That is exactly what I felt, joy, as I looked across the room at my Aunt Tina and realized how awesome our God is.

I do not know what loss you may be experiencing now, or what series of losses have piled up, one upon another, in your life, but I do know that the solution is not trying to fill the void that has been created with stuff, people, or even the hope that somehow it will all magically disappear.  The answer is in trusting the one who is capable of redeeming and restoring all things, and being willing to wait and see how He will turn these ashes into beauty.

I am confident one day you, like my Aunt Tina, will find yourself standing amidst the evidence of this redemption.

 “Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me;
 O Lord, be my helper.”

 You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;

 You have loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness, 

 That my soul may sing praise to You and not be silent.
 O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever. - Psalm 30:10-12

 “Then I will make up to you for the years 

 That the swarming locust has eaten" - Joel 2:25