Journal of a Living Lady #81
Some mornings are better than others. At four
o’clock a.m. today, I was vomiting, hoping this was my final hasty trip to the
bathroom. Not until several hours later was I finally able to climb into bed to
stay for a while. This new chemotherapy is meaner than the last one. As
predicted, I grow sicker each day while the injected poison does battle with
the enemy cancer cells within me.
In a fog of weariness, I picked up the
ringing phone by the bedside. It was a friend calling to inform Buddy and me
that our mutual friend, Ed Boswell, had passed away.
Ed faithfully read this column. When his
eyesight diminished severely because of the diabetes a few months ago, his
wife, Joanne, enlarged the type gigantically on the computer so he could read
the column himself.
Ed had been ill for a long time and his death
wasn’t a total surprise. Yet, it was still a shock in a way. Even when we know
death is coming, the reality of it makes us catch our breath.
Ed clearly recognized me at my last visit.
Since Joanne was occupied with a worker from hospice, I sat with Ed, listening
mostly, as he talked about whatever came to mind. He would flitter from one
subject to another, never quite finishing the story he started. Occasionally he
would quote bits of recognizable scripture, mostly about heaven.
As it came time to leave, I knew it was unlikely that I would see Ed
alive in this world again. My intentional last words to him were, “I love you,
Ed. We will see each other again one of
these mornings.” I leaned over the recliner and gave him a lingering bear hug.
Tears welled in his eyes. In a few seconds,
with quivering lips, he said, “I love you, Miss Nancy. You were the best Sunday
School teacher I ever had.”
This was one of those poignant, memorable
moments in life. A huge emotional knot filled my closing throat. Tumultuous
tears tumbled down my cheeks. Yes, I
was privileged to be Ed and Joanne’s
Sunday School teacher, but Ed, himself, had taught me so
much by example in the years I had known him.
Ed left an impression. He wasn’t an elaborate
dresser or an elegant speaker. He didn’t drive a fancy car or have a lot of
money, but if you needed his last dollar, he would have quickly given it to
you. Ed was a doer, ever eager to give a helping hand to a friend or stranger.
Summer before last there was hardly anybody in the county who didn’t get a big
bunch of his home-grown turnip greens, personally picked and enthusiastically
delivered with an unforgettable hearty smile.
Buddy
and I first knew Ed and Joanne nearly thirty years ago when we were members of
a little country church in Stockbridge, Georgia. For years, Buddy and Ed drove
a church bus all around the rural country side picking up boys and girls,
bringing them to Sunday School.
Somehow,
in my mind’s eye of the future, I see all those happy little children rushing
around the streets of gold, grabbing hold of his white robe and saying, “Thank
you, Mr. Ed. We are here today because of you.”
Good-bye
for now, Ed, my friend, my brother. See you in the morning.
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