Loves Lonely Offices

I'm guessing that the older we get, the more we realize, because of our own experiences, there were things our parents (and others) did for us without our being aware of them. Many of these things are simple everyday actions such as putting things away we left out, tip-toeing so as not to disturb, doing the dishes in our stead etc. Others have more significance.


A poem by Robert Hayden gives a poignant expression to this idea:

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

We will likely be quite surprised and overcome when we look back on mortality and see all the things, general and specific, that our Heavenly Parents did for us that we were totally oblivious of at the time. (These will not be “austere” but I'm guessing will be “lonely” )Some of these may take eons to recognize and some, depending on our post-mortal situation, we may never grasp nor appreciate.