Author: gettingofftheinterstate

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The Kite

by Donna Poole

The clouds threatened rain and the chilly wind echoed their warning. The usually crowded beach at Lake Michigan was almost empty except for the two people flying kites, a grandpa, and his little grandson.

The grandpa had three kites in the air already. Then he helped the little boy launch his kite, a beautiful butterfly, translucent blue, yellow and red with four long tails. The kite was taller than the boy was. The wind tugged at the kite and tousled the boy’s sandy blond hair. He danced with excitement, bare feet sometimes in the sand and sometimes at the edge of the asphalt parking lot. With Grandpa’s help his kite soared effortlessly high into the sky. Grandpa handed the string to his grandson, and the kite began wobbling erratically. Then it plunged to the sand.

I caught my breath as the child ran to his kite, sure it was broken and waiting for tears, but no, the kite was unharmed. Patiently, the grandpa helped the boy launch his kite again. It remained airborne for a few seconds longer this time, but again nose dived to the ground.

This time the grandpa didn’t help. He all but ignored the boy’s efforts. The little boy struggled to even pick up the kite, taller than he was. He dropped it once, twice, three times. The third time he tangled himself in the long red tails, but he just brushed them aside and tried again.

I guessed the boy to be three, maybe four years old, a little thing in a long-sleeved t-shirt and tan shorts. I kept waiting for him to call for his grandpa’s help or for his grandpa to offer, but neither thing happened. I only managed to stay in my own lane and mind my own business because I can barely keep my balance with my cane; I’d be no help to a little boy trying to get his kite in the air.

He was a determined little kid. The fourth time the kite lifted up, up…I held my breath. But no. Down it came with a crash. The fifth time he let the string out and the kite soared up high and higher into the sky above the lake.

“Yay!” he hollered. “Look! Look!” And he danced across the sand looking up at his beautiful butterfly kite, translucent blue, yellow and red with four long tails.

His grandpa looked; I looked; my eyes filled with tears. You go, little boy. Oh, the places you’ll go. Your grandpa won’t always be here to help you. Old ladies watching from cars with their canes won’t be able to help you. But I hope you know the Someone who will be able to help.

I sent the video I’d taken of the little boy with his kite to our granddaughter, Megan. She’d just finished her first semester of Physicians’ Assistant School. It had been hard. Megan is brilliant; if she says something is tough; it’s tough.

I knew if something had been difficult for Megan it would be impossible for me. She’d graduated cum laude with a degree in bio-chem from Hillsdale College. Bio-chem? I’d barely passed high school biology, had flunked high school chemistry once and just passed it the second time. So often during Megan’s semester I’d wanted to help her, but she was flying the kite, one shaped like a white coat. I was the old lady sitting in the car with my cane. But an old lady with a cane can pray for a beautiful young woman with blond hair and one dimple struggling to fly a kite taller than she is.

When I sent Megan the video of the little boy with his kite I texted, “He is you.”

 She texted back, “Little buddy was having a hard time for a minute there.”

When it came time for finals Megan was sick. Now she was struggling to fly her kite over Lake Michigan in a thunderstorm. And the old lady watching from the car with her cane cried. And prayed. And cried some more.

I hope that little boy with his kite learns to know the God Megan knows well. She worked impossibly hard, and she prayed even harder. And she flew her kite, the one taller than she is. It’s somewhere out of sight now, and all of us who love Megan are cheering! Her white coat ceremony is in a few weeks.

I just hope at the ceremony I can keep from pointing up and hollering, “Yay! Look! Look!”

Because if no one else there sees a kite shaped like a white coat dancing way up at the ceiling, they need an old lady with a cane to help them see it.

The End

Photo credit for Megan and me: Kimmee Kiefer

***

These blogs are now available in book form on Amazon:

Backroad Ramblings Volume One: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Two: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Three: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

I have four other books on Amazon as well.

Please follow me on Facebook at Donna Poole, author

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The Preacher

Fiction based on fact

by Donna Poole

The preacher’s gnarled hands gripped the steering wheel, and he struggled to keep his eyes opened. He didn’t need to look in the review mirror to know his hair was white and his face lined; he only hoped the discouragement didn’t show on the outside.  As he drove to town he thought of his wife and sighed. There’d been so much he’d wanted to give her through the years, especially now, but so little he’d been able to do. Mostly she’d just wanted more time together, but now the two-week vacation he’d promised her had been reduced to five days at the most and even that was iffy.

She wouldn’t complain; he knew her well after sixty years of marriage. She understood when people needed him, he didn’t leave town. Some pastors might, but he couldn’t. She not only understood, she loved that about him. Still, it was hard. This was to have been their first camping trip in three years.

Cancer had taken a lot from her.

He sighed again. It was lonelier now going to preach at the Medical Care services. She’d always gone with him BC—before cancer, but now her oncology team didn’t think it wise for her to be in a small room crowded with older, sick people. So, he went alone. He’d gone many places alone the last three years. Yes, he was used to it, but it didn’t make it any easier.

The old preacher thought of something his father-in-law had said years before. His wife had asked, “Dad, does life ever get any easier?”

She’d been young then, with long, brown hair and an easy laugh. She still had the easy laugh, but she’d lost all her hair with the chemo treatments, and it had returned thin and white as worn bleached cotton.

Her dad, an old man himself back then had studied her a minute then smiled. “No, honey. Life never gets any easier. But Jesus gets sweeter.”

It’s true. Jesus gets sweeter. If I ever get too old and tired to preach anything else, I can always preach that.

The old preacher was almost to Medical Care. He felt too tired to get out of the car, but he did it. He always did what he had to do.

He walked down the hall and pushed the elevator button. The old people were already singing when he got to the little room.

Why do I call them ‘the old people’? Some of them are younger than I am.

He sang with them and looked around the room. Many of the faces were familiar. Some of the usual ones were gone. That happened more and more often. They were getting older, just like he was, and no one lives forever.

Leah was there. He smiled. If anyone would live forever, it would be Leah. His wife had always liked talking to Leah; they had a connection. They’d both had surgery for brain aneurysms. Leah’s ruptured aneurysm had left her a patient in the Medical Care she’d once worked at.

Leah loved life. She loved Jesus. And she loved telling the other patients what to do. That sometimes didn’t end well. The others didn’t always understand that Leah only bossed them for their own good. They didn’t see her beautiful heart; they only saw one more person telling them what to do, and since this person didn’t have a uniform or a badge, they weren’t having it.

He got up to preach and, as usual, began with a prayer. Instead of starting his sermon he heard himself say, “I’m sorry if I seem tired tonight. My wife and I spent the afternoon in a hospital in Toledo visiting a very sick friend. I had just five minutes at home. Then I visited another woman here in the hospital in Hillsdale and came here to be with you. You may remember my wife isn’t allowed to come here because of her cancer. Tomorrow, we have to leave at five o’clock in the morning because she has a long day at U of M Hospital.”

He gave himself a verbal shaking. Get a grip. You might think you need some rest, but these people would give anything to have the busy life you have. You might feel bad your wife can’t be with you. Some of these people would love to have a mate even if that person was battling cancer.

He shot a silent prayer for help heavenward and began preaching with the love and compassion he was known for, but he was slightly distracted. Leah kept motioning for an aide and whispering loudly.

Oh, no. Is Leah not feeling well?

The aide removed something from Leah’s neck and put into her hand. It didn’t matter that the preacher was in the middle of his sermon. When Leah had something to do; Leah did it.

She wheeled her chair up to the side of the pulpit and motioned for him to put his head down to hers.

“What is it, Leah?”

“Hold out your hand,” she ordered.

He obeyed.

She dropped a cross necklace into his hand.

“This is for your wife. She needs it more than I do. I want her to remember Jesus is with her when she goes to the hospital. Jesus is with her wherever she goes.”

“Well, thank you, Leah.”

“You’re welcome.” She smiled. She wheeled herself back to her place.

He continued with his message, but he really didn’t need to. The preacher had already delivered her excellent sermon.

The old preacher wasn’t as tired going home as he had been driving in. He thought of his wife, exhausted from the long afternoon hospital visit, and probably sleeping. There’d been so much he’d wanted to give her through the years, especially now, but so little he’d been able to do. Mostly she’d just wanted more time together, but now the two-week vacation he’d promised her had been reduced to five days at the most and even that was iffy.

But he had a gift in his pocket he knew would make her smile. He’d wake her and give it to her. She loved Leah.

The cross was a crucifix, and his wife was a Baptist pastor’s wife. She didn’t wear a crucifix, because she worshipped a risen Savior, not one still on the cross, but she’d keep this gift forever. She knew from talking to Leah that she too was trusting a crucified and risen Savior to save her from her sin, not any religion or church, not Catholic, not Baptist. Just Jesus.

And Leah had preached a powerful sermon with her gift, a sermon of one word with four letters. Love.

The End

***

These blogs are now available in book form on Amazon:

Backroad Ramblings Volume One: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Two: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Please follow me on Facebook at Donna Poole, author

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Sweet July

by Donna Poole

Just in time for the fourth of July, the fireflies add their celebration to the nighttime skies. Maybe you call them “lightning bugs.” If you live in the west or in the New England states, you probably say “firefly.” But if you’re from the south or the Midwest you’re more likely to say, “lightning bug.” It’s kind of like you say soda, and I say pop. Or perhaps you use the generic term “coke.”

Long ago our brother-in-law, Mississippi born and bred, asked if we wanted a Coke. We told him we did.

“What kind of coke do you want?” he asked. He then offered what they had, root beer, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and I can’t remember what else.

It’s the same with the firefly versus lighting bug, only it goes by even more names! You might be one of the people in the United States who calls it a lamp bug, glowworm, will-o’-the-wisp, jack-o-lantern, firebob, or firebug. Call them what you will; they are the same insect, but there are about 170 species of them each with its own color and flash.

I know the scientific reason for their glow, but no one can really define the magic they bring to a summer evening. I hope you’ve been lucky enough at some time in your life to stand in a large yard or in a field full of them like I was on a warm evening not long ago.  

“Look!” I said to my little granddaughter Ruby as we walked out to the bonfire waiting for us in her side yard, “Fireflies! Lightning bugs!”

She nodded and laughed. “I’ve been trying to catch some.”

No matter what you called them when you were a child you probably chased them on a warm July night, caught a few, watched them light up in the darkness of your curled hand, and then set them free. And as you watched them fly away, if you were a wise child, perhaps you felt something you couldn’t put words to yet.

When I see the fireflies, I know it’s really July. In sweet July the golden wheat waves in the fields, the corn keeps its promise to be knee high by the fourth of July, and wildflowers add colorful beauty to dusty country roads. The blue skies stretch to infinity.

July is the month for swimming in lakes and creeks, for camping and hiking, for picnics and potlucks. It’s a wonderful month for family, and friends, and fun. It’s the perfect time for picking berries and making pies.

The July days pass quickly, the golden wheat darkens, and it’s harvest time. Tomatoes begin ripening on the vine. That corn, knee high at the beginning of the month, tassels out and the earliest ears are ready. It’s best fresh picked, grilled, and slathered with butter. If the butter doesn’t run down to your elbows when you eat the corn, you haven’t put on enough.

In July, some families pack up and vacation to the beach or the mountains. Maybe they go camping, one of the best ways ever invented to make memories. If you’ve never laughed around a campfire with family or friends, munched a smore, and lingered until the last embers, you haven’t really vacationed. Keep your cruises; give me a trail to hike, a sunset to watch, and a campfire to fall asleep by.

July is a good month to be alive. But by the end of the month the days are already getting shorter; July 25 brought us our last 9 PM sunset of this year. We won’t see another one until May 28 of next year, and that’s a long way off for a girl who loves the long hours of daylight.

I’d like to ask July to linger a little longer. Oh, sweet July will return next year, but it won’t be the same July; it’s different every year, and always it glides into August so quickly we barely notice summer slipping through our fingers.  

By the last day of July, the fireflies aren’t quite so numerous in the dark corn fields. Mornings are quieter; some of the songbirds have already flown south. These are subtle reminders that all good, sweet things end—or do they?

For those who know God as he spelled himself out in the person of his Son, the Lord Jesus, the most beautiful moment we’ve known here is just a dream-shadow of what’s coming.

“All the beauty and joy we meet on earth represent ‘only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited,’” writes Philp Yancey, quoting C.S. Lewis.

And I love what Matthew Henry wrote way back in the 1700s, “Heaven is life, it is all happiness…. There is no death to put a period to the life itself, nor old age to put a period to the comfort of it, or any sorrow to embitter it.”

Today the calendar puts a period after July; tomorrow is August first. Soon enough September 22 will put a period on what we call Summer. But the day is coming, joyful beyond our wildest imaginings, when we’ll no longer have any use for that punctuation mark we call a period.

 But for now, treasure sweet July because on her best days, when she isn’t having a temper tantrum of thunderstorm or deciding to turn up the thermostat to furnace degrees, she gives us something wonderful. With her starry night skies, and fields of fireflies, with her golden wheat and ripening corn, with her generous scatterings of wildflowers, she makes us feel something we can’t quite put words to yet. We glimpse it and then it’s gone, like a firefly in the night sky. It’s music we hear in a dream and can neither forget nor remember when we wake.

Goodbye, July, and thank you. You gave us something too breathtakingly beautiful for our limited vocabulary, a feeling too deep for words. You cracked open a door and we heard it for a second. It was a whisper from that far country calling us home. Even a child can follow the road. It’s found in John 3:16.

The End

First two photos by Kimmee Kiefer

***

These blogs are now available in book form on Amazon:

Backroad Ramblings Volume One: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Two: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Please follow me on Facebook at Donna Poole, author

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My Broken Spirit

a fiction story by Donna Poole

based on a true story by Katherine Clow

I don’t love you more than your siblings; I really don’t. I think my feelings for you are so intense because you’re my first daughter, Vivianne, the one I got to hold in my heart but not keep in my arms. I still have all this love I’ve never been able to give you. I never rocked you to sleep. I couldn’t comfort you when you were sick. I never tiptoed into your room and tucked money under your pillow when you lost your first tooth. You’d be eleven now, probably all long arms and legs, still a little girl, but not for long. I wonder if you’d smile and laugh all the time, the way I did when I was eleven. I think you’d love being big sister to your four little sisters, and I know they’d adore you.

I’ve missed you so much through the years. I’ve remembered you on every one of your birthdays and tried to imagine what you’d look like and what you’d be doing if you were still here with us. Every Christmas I’ve pictured you baking cookies with me, helping decorate the tree, and whispering secrets as we hid a gift for your dad. Sometimes, I’ve almost seen you as one of the angels in our church Christmas program. I’ve had to look twice to convince myself it wasn’t you.

Would you have loved the first swim of the summer? Shouted with joy when it snowed the first time each winter? Would chocolate have been your favorite ice cream flavor? I’d love to know all these things and so many more.

But it wasn’t to be. God took you to heaven. I didn’t blame him, and I wasn’t bitter, but only another mother who has lost her infant daughter can understand my grief. When he took you, he took a piece of me too.

I don’t know who said this, but it’s so true; “You never arrived in my arms, but you will never leave my heart.” 

You never did leave it, and you never will.

Everywhere we’ve moved I’ve taken your little lamb and your memory box. We’ve moved often because your dad is in the navy. You’d be proud of him.

Things happen when you move. On this last move, they lost a third of our belongings. Things are just things, right? But they lost my memory box of you. When that happened, all the love I’d never been able to give you became grief so powerful it broke me.

It shattered and broke my spirit. I broke even more when they tried to trace the box but couldn’t find it.

“Just file a claim,” they said.  

Just file a claim.

How could I file a claim? Nothing could replace the treasures in that memory box. I know I’ll see you again in heaven someday, but that box was irreplaceable.

Sweet baby girl, I did what I always do when I’m broken. I poured out my heart to God, the God who’s holding you in his arms. I begged him to help me be content with losing your memory box. And somehow, he did. I was still sad, but he healed my broken spirit the way only he can.

You’ll never believe what happened next, but maybe you already know. Perhaps God told you. Last week I got a phone call. They’d found the lost vault with our things. They delivered it just this past Monday, and you guessed it, there was your memory box, as intact as my love for you! We didn’t get back everything we’d lost, but I didn’t care. I praised God as I put your memory box where I’ll see it every day, and I put your little tan and white lamb on top of it.

Sunday, we went to church, and they sang one of my favorites, “Victory in Jesus.” It was the last hymn E. M. Bartlett wrote before he died. The words at the end of the second verse meant more to me on Sunday than they ever had before: “And then I cried, ‘Dear Jesus, come and heal my broken spirit.’ And somehow Jesus came and brought to me the victory.”

The chorus and the third verse shout with hope:

“O victory in Jesus, my Savior, forever!
He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him, and all my love is due Him.
He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.

“I heard about a mansion he has built for me in glory,
And I heard about the streets of gold beyond the crystal sea;
About the angels singing and the old redemption story,
And some sweet day I’ll sing up there the song of victory.”

Vivianne, you’re already there, beyond the crystal sea. Mommy will join you someday when my life here is done, but meanwhile, I have happy work to do. I have your dad, your four sisters, and many other people to love, and I plan to do just that.

I’ll keep your memory box close, and sometimes a tear or two might find its way down my cheek, because I only know you in my dreams. Someday, though, I’ll get to know you and hug you with the love I’ve been holding in my heart all these years. Our whole family will be together, and we’ll all sing with the angels. Maybe we’ll even sing “Victory in Jesus!”

You be watching for the rest of us to come, okay?

The End

Photos by Katherine Clow

***

These blogs are now available in book form on Amazon:

Backroad Ramblings Volume One: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Two: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Please follow me on Facebook at Donna Poole, author

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Pliable Pete

by Donna Poole

Back when I was just a piece of pliable plastic, PVC, Polyvinyl Chloride to be exact, I had a lofty goal. Some of my plastic friends hoped to become window frames, or drainpipes. Others wanted to go into high fashion and footwear. Many hoped to enter the automotive industry and become car interiors and seat coverings and contribute to that new car smell everyone loves. The brainy ones aspired to careers in medicine; they wanted to become medical devises and blood storage bags.

Not me!

I wasn’t interested in any of that. I had my own ambition, even though my friends laughed.

“Pete, you gotta be kidding! You want a job where you bake outside in the summer and freeze your base off in the winter? For what? Where’s the glory in that?”

They didn’t get it. I wanted to be a traffic cone, a pylon, and not just any pylon; I aimed for the top. I didn’t want to be just a six-inch pylon used for driver’s ed classes, or a twelve-inch one marking out an athletic field, or an eighteen-inch one used for landscaping or in parking areas. No sir: those weren’t for me. I aimed sky-high; thirty-six inches high to be exact.

I wanted to warn people of danger on roads. I would save lives, hundreds, maybe thousands of lives! What could be more glorious than that?

I knew I had what it took. I was the right color, Orange-152, blaze orange, the high visibility color. I was sturdy but soft and pliable enough so I wouldn’t dent vehicles that might hit me. I practiced my flexibility exercises to get prepared for my dream job. I had courage too; it takes courage to be a pylon. You can’t flinch when semi-trucks come within inches of you.

Not every piece of plastic is cut out to be a traffic cone. Pylons must be patient. They can’t lose their tempers when a stray dog decides to add a bit of yellow to their orange or when a disgruntled construction worker tosses them into a truck with unnecessary force.

I was ready. I was waiting. Would they pick me?

Finally, my day came. I was what I’d always dreamed of being: a traffic cone, a channelizing device, a pylon. Not just any cone; I was Pete, the Pylon! When they loaded me on the truck my orange heart almost beat out of my chest.

Where are they taking me? Chicago? New York City? Los Angeles? Atlanta?

Don’t laugh, but even Pylons dream, and I’d always dreamed high as you may have noticed by now. So, at first, I was more than a little disappointed when they plopped me down on a little two-lane road in rural southern Michigan where they were doing construction. But my dismay didn’t last long. Unless you’ve been part of something bigger than yourself, you have no idea how it feels to stand soldier straight in a line with others, doing your duty in all kinds of weather.

The cone next to me was weathered and dented. He told me I could call him Mr. Bill. He said he was the oldest cone he knew; he been made by the Kelch Company.

“I think I’m about forty years old now, kid,” he said. “I belong in a museum somewhere. Some cones like us only last minutes.”

“What happens to us?”

“Oh, a semi runs over us, or some kid steals us for a T-ball stand or a soccer field marker. It’s a misdemeanor to steal us or deliberately run over us, but about one million of us are taken every year. Some people use us to advertise their garage sales!”

Pliable Pete shuddered.

“You okay there, kid?”

“Yeah, it’s just I’ve dreamed my whole life of standing straight and true warning people of danger, and I don’t want to end up advertising some old lady’s garage sale.”

Mr. Bill laughed. “Your whole life, huh? That can’t have been very long. Tell you what. You have a good heart. I’ll do my best to look out for you.”

Through the long, hot Michigan summer the two cones stood next to each other. Pliable Pete told Mr. Bill he wanted to live to be the oldest traffic cone in history and save hundreds, maybe thousands of lives. Mr. Bill told Pete stories of when he’d been in the Big Apple, the Windy City, and within sight of the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Do you think I’ll get to go any of those places, Mr. Bill?”

“Maybe, kid. Never hurts to dream.”

And then it happened. One rainy September day a semi barely missed Mr. Bill but clipped Pete. Dented and crumpled, he tumbled on his side partway into the ditch and began to cry.

The last thing he heard was Mr. Bill saying, “Hey, kid, you did what you could for as long as you could. No one could do more.”

A car was passing, windshield wipers whipping away the deluge. There were almost as many tears inside as outside; the husband was trying to comfort his wife. Neither of them saw the long line of straight warning soldiers, Orange-152, but at the last minute she spotted the traffic cone lying on its side partway in the ditch.

“Honey, be careful!”

He swerved just in time to avoid joining Pliable Pete, and who knows, two lives may have been saved.

They continued their journey to the cancer center at the University of Michigan.

“I just feel so useless these days. I can’t do one-tenth of what I used to do,” she said.

“Rest when you need to,” he said, “and then do what you can for as long as you can. No one can do more.”

She wiped her face and nodded. “Do you think I’ll ever get well?”

The rain had stopped. He took one hand from the steering wheel and squeezed hers. “It never hurts to dream. And pray.”

And they did.

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The Hoarder

by Donna Poole

He refused to talk about it.

He didn’t even want to hear about it.

“Listen, honey,” Charlene said to him, “it’s a disorder, a real condition. You need help with it, and I can help you. Please, let me help.”

Orville grunted and frowned. “And where’d you hear this? One of your whacky Facebook friends? I don’t have any ‘disorder’.”

“My Facebook friends aren’t….”

She took a deep breath. She refused to get sidetracked. Not again. She didn’t know how it had happened, but she and Orville were both eighty now, and if they didn’t get the job done soon, it wasn’t going to happen. She tried again.

“I read it on the Mayo Clinic website. This disorder can run in families. You know your mom had the same problem.”

He got that look in his eye. “Leave my mom out of this!”

She knew when to back away. She really didn’t want to argue, but this was important. She whispered a silent prayer for wisdom.

“You remember how when you had cancer you had to have that chemotherapy? It was painful, and you hated it, but it helped you. Now you’re in remission.”

Another grunt. “I could hardly forget chemo. But what’s that got to do with this?”

“Well, I read on that website that what we’re about to do can make you angry, and it can be emotionally painful, but we’re going to clean up a dangerous situation, one that can be a fire hazard or cause falls. It’s unsanitary and might even cause diseases. And you need help to tackle it, just like you needed help with the cancer.”

He turned back to the old western movie he was watching on the television. She just stood there, waiting.

Finally, he clicked the remote, and the screen faded.

“Couldn’t we tackle this job later?”

“That’s what you’ve been saying for years. Come fall, we’re moving out of this big house and into that little one-bedroom apartment we’ve been on the waiting list for. We have to get this done!”

“Okay, okay, don’t get your tailfeathers twisted. I’m coming.”

He struggled out of his recliner and grabbed his cane.

Together they went through the side door into his domain, the garage. They hadn’t been able to park the car in there for decades. Charlene had shoved aside enough clutter to make room for a chair, and she guided him to it.

“Sit here, and I’ll bring you things, honey. You decide whether to give them away or throw them out.”

“Throw them out! There’s nothing in here that should be thrown out. It’s all good stuff.”

Charlene glanced at the pile of old Reader’s Digest magazines that reached from the floor almost to the ceiling. She blinked away a tear. Crying wasn’t going to help.

Where can I begin? What’s in here that he isn’t going to feel he might need someday?

Charlene grabbed the closest box to her. It was filled with old, dust covered light bulbs.

“How about these? Throw them out?”

“Put them on that shelf over there. Those are bulbs I’ve saved from other cars, turn signals, back up lights. Never know when I might need one.”

“Honey, there’s no room on that shelf.”

“Save them somewhere.”

Charlene started bringing him jars and cans of nails, screws, nuts, and bolts.

“Keep those too. Never know when I might need one.”

“How many of these have you used in the last five years? We’re only going to live here a few more months. Where will you put any of this stuff when we move to that one-bedroom apartment in the fall? You won’t have a garage there or even a shed.”

He looked around hopelessly. The garage was packed floor to ceiling with old, warped wood, sleds, broken bikes, jars of nails, screws, nuts, bolts, mildewed cardboard boxes, metal pipes, broken power tools, newspapers, magazines, and that was only what he could see. Who knew what was under it?

He tried making a feeble joke. “You know that old tom cat that ran off five years ago? You don’t suppose he’s under all this do you?”

“I hope not!”

“Smells like he could be, doesn’t it?” he asked. “I really loved that cat.”

“I know you did, honey.”

“I really am a hoarder, aren’t I?” he asked in a voice so low she could hardly hear. “I don’t think I can do this.”

And then Orville did something Charlene hadn’t seen him do since his mom had died twenty years earlier. He buried his face in his hands; his shoulders started shaking, and he sobbed.

“I wish it would all just disappear. I can’t decide what to do with it.”

Charlene put her arms around him and held him close. “Never mind. We’ll work something out. How would you like to get away and go to Lake Michigan for a few days?”

Lake Michigan was their happy place, but they hadn’t been there in years.

He looked up at her. The tears on his face wrenched her heart. “Where would we get the money?”

“I have a little I’ve been saving. Let’s go in the house. You take a nap, and I’ll make the arrangements.”

Orville fell asleep almost instantly. Charlene felt uneasy about his color; he looked so much the way he had when he’d had cancer.

Life’s too short for this. He can’t change the hording any more than he can his eye color, not now. And only God know how much I love this man.

She went to another room where she wouldn’t wake him and started making phone calls.

Her eyes widened when she discovered how much the cost of hotels in Muskegon, their favorite town near the lake, cost now. She moved her search inland an hour from the lake; they could still drive and spend the day in Muskegon. The hotel clerk told her it was a good thing she only wanted Wednesday and Thursday nights; weekends cost triple and were booked the rest of the summer.

What in the world? Where do people get this kind of money?

Next Charlene called their six grandsons, wonderful young men. “It’s a mess,” she warned them. “Bring gloves. Bring boxes and bags for garbage.”

“Is it really that bad, Grandma?” Their oldest grandson chuckled. “I always wondered why Grandpa never let me in his garage.

“It’s worse than bad.” She sighed. “I don’t know how we’ll ever thank you. And even with the six of you working, you won’t be able to get it all done in the few days we’ll be gone, but I’ll be grateful for whatever you can do.”

The time at Lake Michigan was wonderful. They felt almost young again. They ordered take-out spaghetti from their favorite place, ate it sitting next to the channel in Muskegon, and watched the yachts sail out into the lake. They talked about what life might look like without having to keep up with a big house and yard. They held hands a lot, and Orville didn’t grunt or frown even once.

Charlene was a little nervous when they neared home. Orville had said he’d wished the mess would disappear, but how was he going to feel when he saw their grandsons carrying things out of his garage? How angry would he be?

They pulled into the driveway. There were no grandsons in sight. She was a bit disappointed.

I’m sure they did their best. They have their own lives to live too. Even if they did just a little, it’s better than nothing.

“What are you doing?” Orville asked when Charlene pushed the garage door opener. They hadn’t used it in years.

To her surprise, it still worked. The garage door slowly creaked upward, and even from the car they could see the amazing transformation. The garage was empty except for the clean shelves that still lined the walls. The floor looked freshly swept and even mopped.

Orville raised his eyebrows.

“Our grandsons,” she explained.

He got out of the car and slammed the door.

Orville walked around slowly, inspecting his perfectly clean, totally empty garage.

Charlene followed him, waiting for him to say something, anything.

Please God, don’t let him be too angry.

“Well, well, well.” He chuckled. “Stay here.” Then he went through the side door into the house. After several minutes he returned carrying a plastic bag.

“Now I have room for these!” He began taking empty medicine bottles out of the bag and carefully lining them up on the shelves.

“Orville!” Charlene was laughing and crying at the same time.

He put his arms around her.

“Woman, be glad I’m a hoarder. We hoarders don’t throw anything away. Why do you suppose I still have you?”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed his weathered cheek. “I’m the best thing you ever kept. And you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

They went into the house arm in arm smiling, but Charlene looked over her shoulder at those empty medicine bottles.

Enjoy your shelf life, because tomorrow you’re going in the garbage.

The End

***

These blogs are now available in book form on Amazon:

Backroad Ramblings Volume One: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Two: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Three: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

All of seven of my books are available at amazon.com/author/donnapoole

Please follow me on Facebook at Donna Poole, author

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My Little Big Sister

by Donna Poole

Eve was only seven years old when I was born, but Mom gave her the task of taking me for long walks in my baby carriage. Eve hated it, not because she didn’t love me, but because I was a chubby baby, and all her friends laughed at how fat I was when she walked by.

Mom said I talked early and was potty trained before I was a year old, and that was Eve’s job too. Eve went by her given name, Eva Lee, back in those days, and I couldn’t say that, so I called her “Wee Wee.” She had to watch me while I played outside, and when I needed to use the bathroom, I hollered, “Wee wee, Wee Wee!”

Her friends, who played with her while she watched me, found that even funnier than my chubbiness, and poor Eve was mortified.

I don’t remember any of this. Nor do I recall taking her porcelain doll off her bed, the doll I’d been told not to touch. I was at the top of the stairs and Eve at the bottom when she saw me carrying her doll.

“Donna! You put my doll down right now!”

I put it down. I threw it down the stairs. I’m glad I don’t remember Eve’s tears when she saw her favorite doll shattered in pieces.

My birth turned Eve’s life upside down in many ways. Mom often told us she’d never planned to be a mother; her dream was to become a lawyer. That dream didn’t come true, but she loved her job working outside the home when Eve was little. Raising Eve fell to Grandma Peters, Mom’s mother, who lived with us. Eve adored Grandma.

By the time I was born, Grandma was getting older and not feeling well. When Mom was at work and Eve at school, Grandma Peters cared for me, but she let me fall out of my highchair once too often.

“June,” Dad said, “I married you, not your mother, and you need to quit your job, stay home, and take care of this baby.”

Mom quit her job to take care of Eve and me, but she wasn’t happy about it. I don’t imagine Eve was thrilled either; she loved having Grandma care for her.

I have only one memory of Grandma. I remember a lady in a twin bed pushed up against a wall. She had her face turned to the wall, and she was lying very still. People were crying.

Eve said that memory was the day Grandma died of cancer.  

When I was older Eve told me, “The day Grandma died, my world fell apart. I felt like I’d lost the only person who’d ever really loved me.”

Of course, Mom and Dad loved her, but Grandma had been Eve’s best friend, the one who’d held her, wiped her tears, and shared her joys.

My sister Mary was born when I was fifteen months old, and Eve’s workload grew. When I was five our baby sister Ginny was born. As soon as she was old enough to sit up in a big tub, Mary and I gave her baths. I’m sure Eve was glad we were old enough to help!

When storms thundered and lightning slashed night skies, Mary ran and crawled in bed with Eve. I felt bad because she didn’t come to me; Mary and I were almost like twins. Deep down I knew why she ran to Eve; that’s where we all felt safe.

I was a disobedient and mouthy little girl at home, but terrified and quiet in public. When I was in kindergarten the teacher told me to drink all my milk. I drank it with tears running down my face because I was too afraid to tell her a dead fly was floating in it. One day when class ended, I carried the fuzzy white jacket I loved and hurried out of kindergarten to meet Eve.

As I started down the cement steps with its black round railing, I dropped my jacket. The bigger kids came pouring out of school behind me, looking like a herd of thundering elephants. Eve found me clinging to the rail, crying.

“What’s wrong?”

I pointed at my jacket, trampled by so many dirty feet.

“Why didn’t you just pick it up?”

And then she reached into that tremendous herd of thundering feet—or so it seemed to my five-year-old self—grabbed my jacket, took my hand, and walked me home. I don’t think she noticed my adoring eyes. She was my brave hero! I’d love her forever.

Eve babysat us often. She said I gave her more trouble than any of the others. I guess my love for her didn’t always extend to obedience.

I was in grade school when some of the “popular” kids invited me to join their informal club at school, but to become a member I had to know the meaning of a certain word. At supper that night I asked what the word meant. The table fell silent, but the look on Mom’s face said things I didn’t want to hear.

“Donna Louise,” Mom said, “we do not use words like that at this table!’

Oh no. Here comes the dreaded bar of soap.

Surprisingly, no soap came. Mom said, “Eva Lee, take your sister in the bedroom and tell her what that word means.”

I was afraid; I didn’t know I’d said a bad word.

Eve hugged away my fears. “You didn’t say anything bad, Donna,” she assured me. Then she explained certain facts of life in a way that glorified God and His creation. She made me look forward to becoming a woman.

Eve was only a girl herself, but even then, she had God-given wisdom and sweetness that never left her.

When she finished talking, she said, “Whatever that club is, you probably shouldn’t join it.”

When I was twenty and Eve twenty-seven Mom had a devastating stroke. Eve and I joined hands and begged God not to let her die, to give her more years. Mom lived five more years, but they were difficult, unhappy years for her. Then a second stroke took her to heaven.

Perhaps because we didn’t have Mom, the older we got the closer we four sisters became. We loved every minute we spent together. Three of us struggled with weight and health problems, but not Eve. Can you believe it; she could eat an entire bag of her favorite candy, M&M’s, and not gain an ounce! The other three of us gained five pounds each just watching her.

When Eve was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, our times together became even more precious. For six-and-one-half years Eve fought. She’d be in remission a few months, and then the monster would return.

The treatments were brutal.

“Donna,” Eve said when she was first diagnosed, “please don’t ask God to give me extra years. You remember what happened to Mom when we prayed that. Just pray I’ll glorify Him with the time I have left.”

The eight of us; Eve and Bruce, Mary and Steve, Ginny and Bob, and John and I had some wonderful “sister reunions” during her cancer years. We were together, the eight of us, walking on a pier out into Lake Michigan when Eve got a phone call and heard the word “remission” for the first time. Six of us dropped behind as she and Bruce looked at each other, faces full of joy. She put her head on his shoulder; he put his arm around her, and they walked ahead of us into hope.

Eve kept hosting her magical Thanksgivings the way she always had, though her last few years she couldn’t do much. It was more than enough for the rest of us just to have her there. Our adult kids, who’d gone to Aunt Eve’s every Thanksgiving since they’d been babies, came with their own families and shared in the love and laughter.

Shortly after Eve’s last Thanksgiving, Shari and Shelly, her daughters, put up her Christmas tree, and she loved seeing it. A few days later she went blind. When her ovarian cancer had metastasized to her brain, doctors had treated her with radiation and had warned blindness might be a side effect.

 “The darkness isn’t like closing your eyes,” Eve told me. “It’s a horrible blackness like nothing you can imagine.”

She was so frail by then and not eating much. Still Eve was Eve, trying to smile and make others comfortable, asking about our lives, and always telling me to pray she’d glorify God with the time she had left.

The last time I saw Eve I knew she was dying. My sister Ginny knew it too. We held hands in the driveway behind the car where we couldn’t be seen from the house, and we cried.

Even then I didn’t ask God to give Eve more time; she was suffering too much. She was blind from November until June, and then she could see forever.

I wrote this on my Facebook page nine years ago today: “Last night my sweet sister Eve peacefully left this world. She left behind her cancer, her blindness, and every pain…. She was and is an amazing woman. She loved, gave, encouraged, and cheered on so many. What fun times we shared! When she opened her eyes in heaven, she was no longer blind! I wish I could have seen her face when she looked into the eyes of her loving Lord and Savior. Because we share faith in the Lord Jesus, I know I’ll see her again, but I’ll miss her every day until I can hear her laugh.”

So much has changed in nine years. Eve’s husband, a son-in-law, and a brother-in-law have joined her in heaven. Many babies have been born into the family who know her only from our stories.

Life goes too fast. How long is life anyway? Often, it’s not as long as you think it will be. Better get ready.

For most trips we pack. To get ready to go to heaven we unpack. We unpack a lifetime of sin by believing God meant what He said: Jesus died for our sin. When we confess our sin and accept His sacrifice by faith, God unpacks our sin as far as the east is from the west.

Eve, you asked me to pray you’d glorify God with the time you had left. You sure did that. I saw Jesus in you.

Now it’s my turn to fight cancer, my turn to ask people to pray I’ll glorify God with the time I have left. I’ll be happy if I can share half the courage, love, and laughter you did! See you at Home! And don’t eat all the M&M’S before I get there!

Eve and Bruce’s 50th wedding anniversary.

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The Man Who Never Grew Old

by Donna Poole

I could lie and tell you my dad was perfect, but I’d get called out on that. There are people still alive who know better!

Dad wasn’t perfect, but I adored him when I was a little girl and I miss him still. Dad told me when I was very young, he worked two jobs, one for the railroad and one as a mechanic. Each required a different uniform. He said when he kissed me goodnight or told me good morning, I started giving him funny looks.

Dad said, “Then one day you said, ‘I know! I have two Daddys!’” Apparently, the two different uniforms confused me.

Dad always laughed when he told me that story, the laugh I loved to hear. It was a funny laugh, a kind of heh heh heh!

Dad was the storyteller in the family, the one who loved to laugh. I loved listening to his stories. He’d worked on the Lehigh Valley Railroad, been an auto mechanic, owned his own garage for a short time, and then had become an airline mechanic and inspector. So, he had lots of stories to tell.

He told sad stories; as a little boy he’d never owned a toy except for a broken one he’d taken from someone’s yard and then felt guilty about it. He’d quit school in sixth grade because the kids on the playground had teased him about his Italian heritage and had egged him on to fight with calls of, “Dominic Chick!” He’d usually won too, until he’d decided going to school wasn’t worth the trouble. He got his G.E.D. when I was in high school.

When Dad was a boy, the railroad laid off Grandpa and almost everyone else. Each week a big box of groceries mysteriously appeared on the steps to help feed the family. When the railroad called Grandpa back to work a box came that week, but the day Grandpa got his first paycheck the boxes stopped.

“It was the Mafia who brought the food, wasn’t it Dad?” I asked when he told us that story.

He nodded. “Nobody said the word, but we all knew it was them. They were good like that. They’d cut their own grandmother’s throat if the mob boss told them too, but they loved family, and they took care of their own.”

“Was Grandpa in the mob?” I asked.

Dad laughed. “No, honey. He would have been a lot richer if he had been. But we were Italian, and that’s all that mattered back then.”

Back then all the Italians in Sayre, Pennsylvania lived in the part of town called “Milltown.” And there was a lot of discrimination; Milltown was “the wrong side of the tracks.” To me, Milltown was a charming place where aunts, uncles, and cousins congregated at Grandma and Grandpa’s on Sunday afternoons, a place where the sunporch smelled like geraniums and the kitchen smelled like garlic and good things cooking.

Dad called his parents “Ma” and “Pa” and treated them with great respect as did all his siblings. Dad regretted the time they’d rebelled as children; they’d refused to speak Italian at home, so Grandma and Grandpa had to learn English, but in the process, Dad and his brothers and sisters forgot how to speak Italian.  

Most of the stories Dad told were funny, like trying to run away to California as a boy and throwing all his clothes in the back of an open box car and then not being able to run fast enough to hop on the train.

He told about working as a mechanic for Al Theetge Chevrolet. Al put a fire extinguisher in each mechanic’s bay. But he didn’t give an extinguisher to one man who was an excellent mechanic but challenged in other areas. That made the guy mad. So, one day, when a car caught on fire in the man’s bay, he just sat there and said quietly, “Far. Far. Far.”

Fortunately, someone heard him, rushed in, and extinguished the fire.

Dad never said if they gave the man an extinguisher after that or not, but I can still hear Dad laughing when he told that story.  

 Dad believed with all his heart you get to heaven only by faith in Jesus who died for our sin, and not by good works, but nevertheless, church was important to him. If we kids said we were sick and needed to miss church, Dad wanted to know exactly how sick we were.

Once I died early on a Sunday morning, and Dad told me to get up, walk it off, and get ready for church.

Dad never disciplined us kids, maybe because he was always a kid at heart himself. Poor Mom had her hands full.

Dad never thought of himself as old. When his years started to add up, Dad rode his bike up and down the steep hills in New York State to keep in shape. He planted dozens of rose bushes with a tomato plant next to each one to help prevent black spots. He gave away bushels of tomatoes. He mowed his own yard and shoveled his own snow all his long life.

There was the time, after Mom died, that dad dated a series of younger and younger women. I think he was in his eightieth decade, or close to it, when he got himself engaged to a young woman commonly known as the “town tramp.”

How young? She was younger than any of my sisters or me. My older sister, Eve, wanted me to help her talk Dad out of marrying the woman. I objected.

“He’s not going to listen to us. What reasons can we give him he doesn’t already know?”

Eve was near tears. “Just suppose Dad goes through with it and marries her! Think about that! What are you going to call her?”

“I’m going to call her ‘Mom.’”

I thought the mental image of me calling someone younger than myself “Mom” would make Eve laugh. It didn’t.

The marriage didn’t happen. When Dad finally broke up with his fiancée all she said was, “Can I keep the ring?”

Then she showed up at church on Sunday with Dad’s good friend, deliberately picked the pew right in front of Dad, and sat as close to the guy as she could get.

Dad said, “If she thought that was going to make me jealous, it didn’t work. It made me mad. I’d felt bad before then, but after that, I was just glad I hadn’t married her.”

Dad didn’t quit dating. He had a bumper sticker that said, “If you’re rich, I’m single.” But he never got engaged again. It’s probably a good thing, because, except for my mom, Dad had truly terrible taste in women. Clara was the one exception.

Clara was a wonderful Christian woman and Dad’s age. I wouldn’t have minded if Dad had married Clara, and Clara thought it was an excellent idea, but Dad wasn’t having it. She proposed to him one too many times.

Dad said, “Clara if you say one more word about getting married, that’s it. We’re through. We won’t even be friends. I won’t write you anymore letters. When you’re up here in New York visiting family, we won’t go out anymore.”

I asked Dad why he didn’t want to marry Clara; she was richer than he was, and she was single! I thought perhaps Dad objected because she looked so much older than he did, and Dad always thought of himself as a young man, but that wasn’t it. His reason surprised me.

“She likes to galivant all over the country, honey, and I like to stay home.”

Clara stopped proposing to dad and married another gentleman. He didn’t live long.

“See?” Dad said to me. “Told you so. She probably killed him with all that traveling.”

Once again Clara turned her attention to Dad, and he agreed to write letters and keep company when she was in the area, but only if she promised never to mention marriage. She agreed. She and Dad remained good friends until one day tragedy struck. Clara was bent over, working in her garden, when a teenager snuck up behind her and shot her in the back of the head.

The police said poor Clara probably died instantly and never knew what happened. I hope so. She was a good friend to my dad, and he mourned her loss.

When the detectives asked the young man why he’d shot Clara he shrugged and said, “I got up that morning and wondered what it would feel like to kill someone.”

Clara and Dad had this in common; they both trusted Jesus as Savior from sin, so they’re both in heaven now. Mom is there too. I bet Dad is glad Jesus said there’s no marriage in heaven. Otherwise, he might still be running from Clara, and Mom might have something to say about it too!

Dad lived to be ninety and a half and was healthy until just about a month before his death. When he was dying in the hospital he asked, “What am I going to say to June?”

My sisters assured him that because of Jesus’ death on the cross, God had forgiven all his transgressions and Mom had too.

I listened to my sisters, and I knew they were right. Because Dad had trusted Jesus as his Savior, God had forgiven all Dad’s sins, the ones we knew about and the ones we didn’t. And he’d forgiven all of mine too. I looked at Dad as he listened to my sisters. He looked relieved. I couldn’t resist.

“Dad, just in case they’re wrong, if I were you, I’d duck when I saw Mom.”

Dad laughed. Heh heh heh.

Dad was still driving right up until he went into the hospital, though he probably shouldn’t have been. Riding with him was a death-defying adventure.

When Aunt Mary walked into the hospital room, Dad was only semi-conscious.

“Aunt Mary!” Someone exclaimed. “You didn’t drive yourself here, did you?”

She was in the process of explaining that my cousin Tom had dropped her off at the door when Dad roused from semi-consciousness. He sat straight up and said, “I drive!” Then he fell back onto his pillow and continued sleeping. That was Dad, determined to be young and independent until the end.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. You weren’t perfect, but you were my dad, and I love and miss you. See you at Home, around the Big Table. I don’t think Mom will still be mad at you. I can’t wait to hear you laugh again.  

Dad and Mom

My grandparents

Grandma in front of their house in Milltown.

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Cookies in Bed

by Donna Poole

Pa in his kerchief and I in my cap had just settled down for a sweet spring nap when what to our wondering ears should appear but a knock on the door of our boudoir-ere!

It was our son-in-law, the one who lives with us.

“Hey, we’ve got these two cookies left. Want to try them?”

I took one look at the deliciousness. “Thanks, Drew!”

Forget the fact that I’d already brushed my teeth. Never mind the fact I’d just commented to the aforementioned “Pa,” who I never call by that name except in absurd poetry, that sleeping in clean sheets was one of my favorite feelings. We’d just washed ours that very day.

I mean, how old are we? Surely people almost three-quarters of a century old have mastered the art of eating cookies in bed without leaving a trail of chocolate crumbs between clean sheets.

Those cookies were delicious. Fantastic. They didn’t measure up to our daughter’s homemade ones, but for store bakery cookies, I’d never had anything like them. And yes, I did get up and brush my teeth again. I remember Dad saying he had a goal of dying with as many of his original teeth as possible. At the time, I thought his aspiration was pretty funny, but now I share it.

We got up in the morning and started making the bed, John on one side, I on the other. We looked at the bed. We looked at each other. And we laughed.

I still don’t know how two small cookies could have left so much chocolate or how we managed to get it in that many places, both on the bottom and the top sheets. I wish I’d taken a picture. But you can use your imagination.

How old are we? Apparently, we aren’t old enough to know better. We had to strip the bed and wash the sheets again. But it was worth it! When we told Drew how much we’d enjoyed the cookies, he went out and bought us a whole package of them. Had we learned our lesson? Did we refrain from eating them in bed? Keep reading.

In spite of our combined health problems—we won’t bore you with the list but their name is legion—there’s something fun about growing older together. The simple joys are more delightful than ever.

Remember being young and spending the day at an amusement park? When the lights came on, and the moon rose over the roller coaster, you knew the day was ending. Everything looked more beautiful than it had at high noon.

Then a voice came over the speaker: “Park closes in thirty minutes. Make your way to the gates.”

Maybe there was time for one more ride; what would it be? That last ride was the best of the day. Then with sore feet and a sunburned face you trudged out of the gate. Perhaps you looked wistfully over your shoulder at the Ferris wheel still spinning against the stars and listened for the last strains of music as you walked through the parking lot to your car. One last glance; you’d be back, or would you? Nostalgia can sweeten life even for the young.

I think growing older is like that; nostalgia sweetens life. At least it does for John and me. I don’t call us “old” just yet; someone said “old” is always at least ten years older than what you are. But we can’t deny that we’re older. And so, the simple things bring delight: morning coffee together, a drive down a country road to admire the wildflowers, a cool morning breeze, and mama robins singing their babies to sleep at twilight.

Times with family become the sweetest part of life. Change comes too quickly; we don’t want the park to close so soon.

A while back, our little Ruby held my hand with her tiny one as I walked on uneven ground. “I don’t want you to fall, Grandma.”

I wish I could paint you a picture of Ruby’s energetic sweetness; tiny, cartwheeling through life, brushing blonde hair away from beautiful brown eyes, always in a hurry, but always ready to stop and help anyone in need.

“I don’t want you to fall, Grandma.”

I smiled at her seriousness. In her mind her tiny self could keep Grandma from falling.

“Ruby,” I said, “please don’t grow up.”

“I can’t help it, Grandma. When you turn six you grow up. That’s just the way it is.”

Ruby’s right, you know. That’s just the way it is; life changes, and when we get closer to the end of the day than the beginning, we know it. Even kids know it instinctively; that’s why they beg for “just one more ride.”

Knowing life has an expiration date is a feeling that deepens with age, and that’s not a sad thing. It makes us love deeper and live sweeter. It makes us enjoy laughter as we never have before.

I tried to put it all into words to the medical assistant who was checking my vitals before my last cancer treatment. He nodded and smiled.

“And the wisdom? Did you get that?”

I laughed. “I’m still waiting for that to show up.”

At least we’re wise enough to know this: those little grudges and hurts? We don’t have time for them anymore. We’re too busy looking for the last bits of beauty before earth’s sunset and the eternal sunrise.

A little boy asked his grandpa why he read his Bible so much. The grandpa told him he was studying for his final exam.

That’s a cute reply, but we aren’t worried about the final exam. Jesus passed the test for us when he died on the cross in our place, and we made his substitution ours when we accepted it by faith. We’re ready for the eternal sunrise and looking forward to it, but meanwhile, we plan to enjoy every minute before sunset.

So, we eat cookies in bed. Even if we must wash the sheets in the morning, it’s worth it.

Those cookies though! They’re life’s sweetness baked and packaged. I ate one just now.

Our daughter and son-in-law knocked on the door of our room while I was sitting up in bed typing this story.

“Mom,” Kimmee said, “you have a chocolate chip on your shirt.”

Not anymore, I don’t. I ate it. I hope there aren’t more chocolate chips between the sheets, but there probably are.

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A Walk Among Tombstones

by Donna Poole

Just down the dirt road a bit from our country church is a peaceful, old cemetery. A brick pillar at the entrance reads:

Lickly’s Corners

Cemetery

1848—1954

Inside that cemetery rest grave markers of people we’ve loved and lost, friends and neighbors of our church. There we’ve also found tombstones carved with names of roads in our area: Carncross, Tuttle, Lickly, or is it Lickley?  There was some kind of ancient disagreement on how to spell Lickly. I don’t imagine the two families involved stood on opposite sides of the dirt road and hurled insults at each other. Whatever happened, the result was the name of the cemetery is spelled one way, but the road and our church, Lickley’s Corners Baptist, are spelled the other.

One warm Sunday, the day before Memorial Day, my daughter Kimmee and I wandered among the tombstones in that cemetery, fighting off the ever-present mosquitoes. We paused awhile at the marker of Kenneth and May Hale who’d been our dear friends and neighbors for many years.

We found elegant markers and plain ones, gravestones too worn to read, and others still legible. All were fascinating; all told a story. This one is on a tall piece of stone and the letters look hand chiseled.

JOHN LIBY

BORN

FEB. 23 1793.

DIED FEB. 12 1859.

POLLY

HIS WIFE

BORN

NOV. 26, 1795.

DIED SEPT. 1, 1894.

Who were you, Polly, and what did you do all those long years after John died?

On a stone that looks like a triangle perched on a log sits this marker:

DANIEL FIELD

1853—1901 68 YS.

SARAH M. HIS WIFE

1840—1919 78 YS.

And you, Sarah M., you outlived your husband by eighteen years. Did they seem terribly long to you? Were they healthy years for you?

It seems most people buried in our old cemetery lived long years for the time, probably a combination of fresh country air and hard farm work. We found this tombstone that read:

SEPHRONIA

WIFE OF

ELIAS JOHNSON

DIED

NOV. 6 1897

91 YRS. & 10 MOS.

I imagine you were sugar and spice, funny and spunky, Sephronia, just like a lot of the old farm women I knew when we first moved to Lickley’s Corners. I remember them laughing at the idea of Women’s Liberation.

One of them said, “We’ve been liberated to do men’s work all our lives. We wish someone would unliberate us!”

They’re all gone now, the old ones we knew when we first came here to live. They taught us so much about life, how to live it, and how to leave it when the time comes.

Kimmee and I kept wandering through the tombstones with each other and with our memories. We looked for military markers because it was Memorial Day weekend, and we found some. Our favorite was a barely legible marker. Kimmee discovered it in the back of the cemetery in a beautiful quiet spot between three trees. The worn marker read:

UNKNOWN

U.S. SOLDIER

I stood there for a minute feeling grateful for all the members of the military who’ve died to secure our freedom. That, after all, is the real reason we celebrate Memorial Day.

But the mosquitoes were especially bad in that spot between the three trees, and Kimmee and I soon retreated to the car.

I love Memorial Day.

We try to attend the Memorial Day parade every year in our little town of Pittsford. The band may be a bit out of step and not always quite in tune, but I love them. They remind me of my own high school band where our frustrated director, Mr. Pinto, once shouted at us, “You kids can play! And you kids can march! But you kids can never play and march!”

I love the fact that there’s so much time between floats in our little parade we can catch up on old times with surrounding neighbors. We could probably order a pizza and get it there between floats.

My favorite part is when the vets go by, carrying the flag. I put my hand over my heart, and I get tears. Every time. Because I love our country. I’m not blind. Nor am I deaf. I hear the shouts from the left and the right; I hear you. Yes, our country is far from perfect; perhaps we’ve never been in this much trouble before. Some claim America is dying.

Those old markers in the cemetery remind me of each dying bedside I’ve sat beside. They are sacred memories. I’ll share just one, from my dad.

Dad said many things when he was dying, some funny, some heartbreaking.

He said one thing that brought tears to my eyes. He woke up, looked around the room, and said, “So sorry. So sorry. Long ago.”

Each time Dad said he was sorry for something my sister assured him that because he’d trusted Jesus as Savior, all was forgiven.

America has a lot to be sorry for too. And God will forgive us if we repent, but I’m afraid we’re so busy shouting at each other we can’t imagine “our side” has anything to repent of.

I’m not one for standing on street corners and hurling insults at the opposing side, but people have died to give us freedom to do so. How many people?

“Since the revolutionary war ended, 646,596 American troops have died in battle and more than 539,000 died from other non-combat related causes.” –military.com

The fact is America isn’t going to be spelled one way anymore, and I don’t think it ever was. What’s the answer?

I wish I knew, but here’s a novel idea of a way to celebrate Memorial Day, and I wish it could happen every year.

Take my hand and come with me. Let’s walk among the tombstones and remember how short life is; one day our lives too will be just a story someone else is telling. Let’s stop hollering about each other’s sins, confess our own, and let’s pray for our country.

Then we’ll leave the tombstones behind and find a small-town parade. When the veterans go by carrying the flag, I’ll put my hand over my heart, and you put your hand over yours. We’ll silently thank God for the U.S.A. and for the wonderful freedoms we still enjoy! Maybe your eyes will fill with tears. I know mine will.

The End

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Some of my blogs along with extra stories are now available in three books on Amazon:

Backroad Ramblings Volume One: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Two: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter

Backroad Ramblings Volume Three: Stories of Faith, Love, and Laughter.

All seven of my books are available at amazon.com/author/donnapoole