(I don’t know if everyone has Vacation Bible School, but it’s pretty big in Protestant circles, and it’s a pretty sweet deal. Also, we are in the heart of the VBS season. After that, grownups with non-employable kids, you are on your own…)

You can’t have Vacation Bible School without glue and construction paper, no more than you can have a legal trial without manila folders.

And you can’t have summertime without having VBS.

I loved Vacation Bible School, a summer staple in the Bible Belt.

No detention…

No homework…

The Kool-Aid flowing free and easy…

VBS was a license to steal, a poor analogy here but you get the point.

”Ahh,”  a friend reminded me, “the smell of varnish on unfinished wood. You know what I’m talking about!”

I do, because I am a veteran of Vacation Bible School, where we learned arts and crafts and the books of the Old Testament all at the same time.

If you’ve missed out on VBS, it’s an annual time at the local church of fun and learning and various activities for the elementary-schoolers, usually lasting each morning for a week.  Or until the coconut cookies run out.

Once you get to be a certain age, like 13 or so, you don’t get “fired” from VBS so much as you graduate.  No more worlds to conquer, no more key chains to make.

By junior high, the Bible is hopefully your companion, but kiddy scissors and jumbo crayons have sort of lost their luster. And your hands are too large to put in plaster, at least cost-effectively.

You can always return to VBS as a volunteer though, the likes of whom make the week possible in the first place.  Otherwise you’d have the preacher and minister of music and the secretary babysitting a few dozen children for a hot summer week. And you’d have at least three resignations the following Sunday morning.

Vacation Bible School. We did every kind of craft you can think of, short of learning how to apply makeup and fake fingernails.

Paper plates turned into turkeys, thanks to some feathers and watercolors.

Macaroni was, we learned for the first time, a dual threat. You could eat it for snack, then use the uncooked part to decorate your Father’s Day gift. Who knew you could paint macaroni?

I have at my house to this day a 5-by-7 piece of construction paper with a black-and-while photograph glued to its middle. The picture of me and my sisters is cut into an almost-circle, the edges of the “frame” are jagged (because we used those special “teeth” scissors”) and the border is crushed egg shells somehow glued to the paper. And spray-painted red and silver. (You’d think it’s the egg shells that make this piece so expensive, but actually, it’s the sentiment.)

We illustrated Bible stories with things we made from pine cones and egg crates and toilet paper holders and scotch tape and clothespins. (This must be what attending “McGyver” Baptist Church would be like!) We didn’t turn water into wine, but our teachers knew how to make a pop bottle turn into a decorative candle holder. If the teachers were totally exhausted or at wit’s end or turned heathen, we fell back on the simple “Outline Of Your Hand” painting.

Did I accidentally knock a kid down a hill outside Piney Grove Baptist one morning at VBS? Yes. Did he break his arm? Yes. Did my dad wear me out? Yes. But worse, he made me stay home a day from Vacation Bible School.  And because of it, he missed out on getting a John 3:16-inscribed Father’s Day carburetor made from tin foil, paper clips and a Pop-Tarts box.

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Hey there my handsome and healthy young friend.

There is no getting around it: you have lost your great-grandmother, and it’s been a tough couple of weeks.

Not many guys even get to know their great-grandmammas, and fewer still get to know them as well as you were able to know and love yours. But that is not what you need to hear right now. How could you know that at your age anyway? And what difference would it make? This was a person who loved you and cared for you and you loved and cared for her. That’s all you know.

And now … gone.

How old are you these days, 13? I think you will be 14 next month. July 2004. I’m sure. Your dad called me the day you were born. I remember because I was driving back from New Iberia from my last game as coach of a Little League team. We’d lost in the state playoffs in the semi-finals. That’s another kind of loss, a loss that, in perspective, doesn’t matter as much as what you are feeling. Perspective is a beautiful thing. And still, pain is relative.

The Little League loss was my fault. I should have talked to my pitcher one batter earlier. He’d have calmed down. We’d have held the lead and lived to fight at least one more day. Then, who knows?

My fault. I think about it almost every day.

The loss of your old and dear friend is nobody’s fault. Or maybe it is humanity’s fault. It’s not yours.

I can’t offer advice. I can speak from experience and tell you how I felt when I lost my grandmothers and grandfathers, but why would you care about that right now? You’d want to, but you can’t. You can later. We can talk about it. But right now, all that matters is that one of your favorites is gone.

I am as sorry as I can be. I love you. I love you because I love your mom and dad and because I was a little boy once and lost a granddaddy who I knew hung he moon. That was not a good time. I cannot say that it compares to what you are feeling. I can just say that in my experience, if yours is similar, it makes me sad. I am as confused talking to you now as I was then.

Life just make no sense sometimes and death makes no sense all of the time. We are not built for a world where people we love are put into boxes, lowered into the ground, and turned back to dust. We aren’t.

It’s a hard truth. But it is as real as the sun coming up in the east, which it surely will.

So right now, it likely matters little that I will be holding a good thought for you. I will be praying for you, even though my prayers might not be very good. There is nothing good in me, but there is everything good in God, who invented good. Who defines good and gives us every good thing, including great-grandmoms. For what it’s worth, I will pray for your understanding of why this happened, your comfort in spite of the fact that it did, and your gained wisdom though this sad and painful event.

So we have that going for us.

Another friend 20 years older than you lost his grandmother a couple of weeks ago. Hurt him. Hurts him still. No age is immune from reality. We soldier along together, and are grateful that God will always show up.

Speaking of showing up: The day your dad called, the day after our little team of guys your age now had lost the lead and the game and our chance at the state title, it lifted me up. Knowing a baby was on the scene now, knowing that our little team had played as hard as it possibly could, made me feel better. One good thing had come to an end, and one good thing— you— had begun. You were good to me before you even knew your own name, Little Teddy.

And realizing that was 14 years ago is a semi-shock. Time is the great mystery. At 14, the mystery of time is not a reality to you yet. It is to me at 58, and it is to your priceless grandmamma, even at 92. Make the most of it.

I look forward to seeing you soon and having you tell me more about her when you’re up to it. In the meantime, nobody can “say the right thing.” But in the uncomfortable silence of loss, know that you are deeply loved, and that you are not alone.

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