Remembrance

“ A truly good wife is the best Treasure a man can find. Her husband depends on her, and she never lets him down. She is good to him everyday of her life.” Proverbs  31:10-12(CEV)

He sat peering out the window into the garden. As I entered the room he called to me. “Tootie, who is that old woman out there?” “Now Granddaddy you know that’s Mammy.” “Oh, yes,” he replied as if he recognized her. But today, he didn’t. 

He didn’t know his sons who later that day came out to bring the hospital bed that would enable her to better care for him. He didn’t know her, his wife of almost 60 years, (ten years his junior). The woman who bore him ten children. His wife who had stood beside him during the years of the depression. The person who had kept his household running as he traveled from Sawmill to Sawmill in his job. The woman who gleaned in the fields as Ruth and Naomi had, just to find a little food . Who worked the fields of others to help make ends meet. Raised chickens and milked the cow, tended the garden, to ensure that there was food enough to eat.

Made clothes for the children, fed them, clothed them,  Quilted to make coverings for their beds. The mother who tucked them in bed and told them stories about Jesus.

No, he didn’t know her, but she was none the less important to his life. For in recent years she had been the one who had cared for him. Bathed him, shaved him, clothed him, fed him. His every, daily need was met by this person who had been his wife of so many years.

When he passed away, she cared for everyone else.  Then one day a few weeks after his death, I walked into the room that they had shared to find her sitting on the bed wiping her eyes with her apron…. she had come into the room to feed him.

As I think back now on all that she did and taught others to do, I wonder… where did she find the strength, but in my heart I KNOW.

Her Legacy lives on.

In Him,

Sharon