Sybil Duffy Heim

Sybil Heim, left us on Friday, November 22, 2024. She was 99 years old. She suffered a very severe hip fracture from a fall on December 30, 2022, another fall this past June, and a fall two weeks ago. Each fall took life from her. How do you sum up 99 years in an obituary? You can’t, really. So, instead of trying, I will share three photos that tell a bit of her story. My mom and dad (Harry) met at The Ohio State University after WW2. After Pearl Harbor, my dad left OSU in 1942 for the (then) Army Air Corps and became a B-24 pilot. My mom graduated from Reynoldsburg High School in 1943, attended Stephens College, and then enrolled at OSU in 1946. My dad reenrolled at OSU that same year. They met at a fraternity/sorority mixer, and even though they attended the social with different people, they left together. They were married at Broad Street Christian Church in Columbus in 1948. My dad died in 2012. They were married for 64 years. She called him Harro. He called her Duf (her maiden name was Duffy). Photo #1 perfectly captures them as a couple.

My mom was a terrific cook. In fact, growing up, she made a full breakfast for the family (five of us) every weekday morning. Eggs and bacon one morning, waffles another, hot cereal and biscuits a third. My dad took the reigns on weekends and gave it his best, but when you follow the best, you come in second. Dinner was just as good. I can’t say what her best recipe was. Was it her meatloaf or her spaghetti? Or was it her fried chicken or her sloppy joes? Maybe it was her apple pie or her homemade ice cream? I can’t say. But I can say this (photo 2). For several years, our church (East Side Grace Brethren) has sponsored a Thursday night meal for any-and-all. It originated at a ministry in the Franklinton area of Columbus. My mom would go to Franklinton weekly with a group from our church. Her contribution was her homemade coleslaw. The regulars at the ministry would ask, “Is the coleslaw lady coming tonight?” She started helping with that ministry when she was 90. She would make several pounds of coleslaw. The ministry in Franklinton closed around 2018, so the meal ministry moved to our church, and my mom continued to make her coleslaw. In photo #2, my mom is filling a plate for someone and being helped by her great-granddaughter (my granddaughter), Kateigh, who was seven at the time. My mom was 94.

My last story is about our church’s outdoor baptism on August 18, 2019. My mom had given her life to Jesus Christ after conversations she had with a women’s Bible study at our church and shortly thereafter with my brother-in-law and me earlier in 2019. Her baptism (video) was her public statement that she believed Jesus Christ died and rose again for her. She realized that eternal life could never be earned by being good because being good can never make up for our sin any more than shoveling your neighbor’s drive could make up for being ticketed for DUI. Mom took her last breath at 8:34 AM on Friday, November 22, at which moment she shed her worn-out body. None of us had been at the hospital as yet on Friday, but a hospice nurse saw that my mom’s breathing had become labored. She sat with my mom and played songs for her from my mom’s iPad - Amazing Grace, He Lives, Blessed Assurance, It Is Well with My Soul, The Old Rugged Cross, and In the Garden. She died while “In the Garden” was playing. It was her favorite gospel song. The Bible says that to be “absent from the body” is to be “present with the Lord.” At the resurrection of the dead in Christ, my mom will receive her resurrected body, which will be a perfectly functioning human machine. It will never age or succumb to any germ, virus, bacteria, or any other malady. Has she yet seen my dad, who died a believer in Jesus Christ? I have no idea. But I suspect the transfixing glory of the risen Christ is such that she as yet may not have turned away from it. She will see my dad soon enough.

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