He only lived a few hours.
Caitlin Culp Vestal, his mother, is one of my great nieces. Her paternal grandmother is my older sister, Leta Webb Culp.
I’ve never met Caitlin’s husband, Charles Vestal, who married into my extended family. But my dear departed mother, Vandelia Smith Webb, would have claimed Charles (In-law was not in her vocabulary) and would have welcomed William Nicholas as a great, great grandson.
That’s the way Mother thought of family. I accused her of claiming seventeenth cousins. She never used this business of such-and-such a cousin, three times removed. I’m glad she didn’t because she would have expected me to understand it. To Mother, a cousin is a cousin is a cousin.
Some of Mother’s wide-open arms of kinship rubbed off on me. So my heart is heavy as I think of and pray for Caitlin and Charles. They live in Austin, Texas. Her parents also are in Texas.
In Anderson, South Carolina, I’m a geographically distant uncle for Caitlin and her daddy, James Culp, and for little William Nicholas Vestal. But I’m not the farthest-flung of our far-flung family.
Most of the Webb-Culp-Way clan — with my brothers and sisters and me as the Senior Generation — are in Texas. Our sons and their families extend this extended family: Russell and Sabina in New York City; Jonathan, Vicky, Ethan, and Addie in Chicago. Other relatives are in California, Kansas, and perhaps other points distant from our original Texas base. The most remote, geographically, are Caitlin’s aunt and uncle, Evelyn Culp Sasamoto and Kisaku Sasamoto in Japan.
So I am part of a worldwide sadness and a chain of prayers for Caitlin and Charles.
I don’t know any of Charles’s family, but doubtlessly they, too, are reaching out to this dear, sorrowing couple.
Pansy and I can share some corner of grief over William Nicholas: Russell, our firstborn, was a premature twin. His brother Randall lived thirteen days.
As I think of the loss shared by so many of us, a Bible passage and a hymn come to mind:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God (2 Corinthians 1:2-4).
Before our Father’s throne,
We pour our ardent prayers;Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one,
Our comforts, and our cares.
Our mutual burdens bear;
And often for each other flows
The sympathizing tear.
1 comment:
Thank you, Lawrence, for embracing Caitlin, Charels, and William.
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