“I can remember going to church with my mom one Mother’s Day when I was a little boy,” the old man at the pulpit said. “I asked her to tell me about the roses the women were wearing.”

For Mother’s Day my mom had asked that my wife and I go to church with her. We have been helping my mom move out of her home of more than 20 years, so we have gotten to spend some time with her lately. Spending some church time with her on Mother’s Day, especially after not having gone to church in so long (practically a sin in the south), was a special treat.

At the end of a very sweet and heartfelt service that both praised moms for everything they do and begged them to relax, an old man made his way to the pulpit to say a closing prayer (the “evr’body git on outta here an’ go eat” prayer). He was a man who didn’t typically show much emotion, and he spoke in a very straight forward manner…

“My mother told me,” the old man continued, “that the women were wearing roses to honor their mother—a red rose if their mother was living and a white rose if she had passed on. After a bit I told my mother that she should be wearing a pink rose…since Nana was already half dead.””

The crowd burst out in stunned laughter while the man stared ahead. Over the next minute or two the laughing pulsed, trying to die down but always rising back up, everyone surprised by both the story and the source. The old man waited calmly and finally, as we all settled back down, he leaned into the microphone and said, “Let us pray.”

I don’t think any of us processed much of what he said after that. Happy belated Mother’s Day to all moms living, dead, or a bit of both.