Y UNCLE HAROLD AND AUNT DOROTHY WERE “GOOD FOLK.” THEY WERE pillars of the church and exemplars of a lifelong commitment to one’s spouse, even when the going gets tough. Uncle Harold genuinely cared about the academy students he taught, while Aunt Dorothy lovingly supported him and his work in every way she could.

Harold and Dorothy knew all their neighbors and were the quickest on the block to help anyone in need. Their lovingly tended fruit trees and an extensive vegetable garden supplied many people with fresh produce. After I graduated from college, they hosted me for a week so I could take a course near their hometown. I observed firsthand as a young adult how endearingly tender were their words to each other, how solicitously they saw to each other’s needs. Their daily devotional books are now my own, and though I don’t use them quite as faithfully as they did, I make the attempt. They never fail to bless me.

I was in my 30s and they in their 80s when they both passed away, little more than a year apart. They had no children. The job of sorting through their possessions and making appropriate disposition of them fell to my sister, Colleen, and me, and we did the job with heavy hearts. There were many poignant moments: finding their tattered and well-marked Bibles, gilded names on the leather binding all but worn away; pulling out a dusty, unpromising box to discover old family memorabilia; coming across a stash of Uncle Harold’s many handwritten sets of Sabbath school and sermon notes (he could always be counted on to fill in for the pastor). We found their checkbook with its carefully written log of checks in small but sacrificial amounts to charity after charity, church entity after church entity, every single month. Colleen and I shook our heads in shared, silent awe.

There were also the inexplicable discoveries at which we chuckled in bafflement, such as the stringless ukulele or the nylon stocking tied up at the end and filled with old soap bar remnants. (We later learned from a Depression-era friend that those were used to create suds in the laundry, since laundry soap was costly or impossible to come by during that time.)

Then there were the stacks of empty cottage cheese containers neatly stashed in the garage. What to make of them? We were tempted to speculate: cheap paint containers? hidden hoarding illness? We laughed as we tossed them into the appropriate trash bin.

Finally we finished the job, tucking all these memories into the box in our hearts labeled, “Our beloved Uncle Harold and Aunt Dorothy.”

One day years later I was washing up some dishes, and on the counter rested an empty cottage cheese carton. In it my sister had thoughtfully sent over some of her delicious potato salad so I’d have something to eat while cramming for a test. I started to throw it away when a thought occurred to me: I could save this and use it to take a portion of my next culinary inspiration over to Ruth, a shut-in elderly friend. That way she wouldn’t have to worry about washing and returning the container.

In a rush of delight that thought instantly engendered another—a small but precious epiphany that harked back to all those apparently useless cartons in Uncle Harold and Aunt Dorothy’s garage. I knew I had found the answer. What Colleen and I saw as useless empty cartons were actually a testimony of a caring personal ministry of Harold and Dorothy.

What kinds of things will our loved ones find at our passing—what lessons might be taught? Will the testimony I leave behind witness to the love of Jesus as theirs does?

I fervently pray that it will.

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Janine Goffar is a nurse and freelance writer living in Loma Linda, California. This article was published March 11, 2010.