Word from her doctor is that my Great Aunt Wilhemina Haskins Hartvigh is expected to die soon. She loved her sisters, her family, her country, her Upper Peninsula, her Northern Michigan University Wildcats, and her Messiah Lutheran Church, but my Great Aunt Mena was a woman singing the Lord’s songs in a foreign land for as long as I can remember. What a figure in my family. What a witness. She had no enemies but one, and that one doomed beneath the waters of her baptism. So through tears of sadness and great laughter we see and hail from afar the New Jerusalem she’s been walking toward every day of her life.

Jerusalem, my happy home,

when shall I come to thee?

When shall my sorrows have an end?

Thy joys when shall I see?

Thy saints are crowned with glory great;

they see God face to face;

they triumph still, they still rejoice

most happy is their case.

There David stands with harp in hand

as master of the choir:

ten thousand times that man were blessed

that might this music hear.

Our Lady sings Magnificat

with tune surpassing sweet,

and all the virgins bear their part,

sitting around her feet.

There Magdalen hath left her moan,

and cheerfully doth sing

with blessèd saints, whose harmony

in every street doth ring.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

God grant that I may see

thine endless joy, and of the same

partaker ever be!