We waited until today (Monday) to go back to the Vault and remove the flowers and some of the dishes from our big 50th Gala Saturday night. The lovely decorated room was much the same except the sounds were gone.

The laughter and joy that spilled over from family and friends had left with all the guests. The sounds of music and CandyLee’s “remember when” songs were still in my memory but absent in the grand room.

The clinking of toasts and dancing shoes were somewhere still in my memory bank but nowhere in the Vault. Sounds of our grands playing upstairs and observing a few of their Rockettes’ dance routines had vanished.

The aromas of all party foods that are never in diets were gone; only a few remnant crumbs of our 50th cake remained on the gold sequined cloth. The beautiful and handsome faces of hostesses Tahya and Katie, and hosts Eli and Kevin were back to their own lives and in much less need of parenting than in times past. Fifty years had seen to that.

When I got back home with a small sampling of flowers to help extend their lives, I sat them on the kitchen counter and went to my “prayer spot.” Then I did what we women with nostalgic hormones and tear ducts do when we don’t have or need explanations. I cried!

I can’t really explain why because my cup was still running over, but tears were all I could muster. Sometimes there are no words to express God’s goodness and how little we deserve such blessings.

Certainly I was also homesick for family and friends that had such a brief time to visit, and homesickness is an emotional companion!

The entire weekend was just another reminder of how life is “just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away,” and how wonderful heaven will be when nostalgia and homesickness will have no place or part and there will be no end to celebrating my Savior’s blessings. 

And . . . there will never be any more “Monday after!”

Letters to Camille Anding can be sent to P.O. Box 551, Brookhaven, MS, 39602, or e-mailed to camille@datalane.net.