Visiting Memory Lane

Yesterday  one of my life-long friends and I visited someone we've been meaning to visit for over a year. As I told him in May, we better hurry, nobody's getting any  younger.

So off we went. She lives on the farm that belonged to her first husband's family. 

They married when she was twenty-one. She had a son when she was twenty-two. Her still-new husband was killed in France during World War II, which made her a widow at age twenty-three.

That baby is seventy-four years old today, widowed himself and caring for two adult disabled sons.

The reason we were visiting was, as we reminisced some months ago, we reckoned that she and one other were the only two teachers still living who taught us in grade school.

She concurred that she believed that to be so.

She is ninety-six and sharp as any tack. She not only remembers all her students, but their siblings, their mamas and daddies and grandparents, too.

She is a gold  mind of information.

She's read two of my books, she said. I waited a moment, but she said nothing else. "Um, what did you think?" I asked timidly.

She gave me that stern look I remember so well from forty-one years ago and replied, "I give you an A-."

I said, "Whew!"

And she burst into laughter. Later she said I had a gift with words.

She told her life story ( so far ): After she was widowed at age twenty-three, she did remarry. He was older than she, and had also been married. He had a son and a step-daughter. After  his second wife died, the step-daughter went to her mother's family, but she was desperately unhappy, because he was the only father she'd ever remembered and needed him still.

So, they kept her and raised her, too. 

Score so far is one son, one-step son and one might-as-well-be-daughter.

They had a good life for many years. Farmed. She taught school. Life was pretty good. They had two daughters and three sons.

We're up to eight kids now, if you are counting.

When their youngest was six years old and another son two weeks from graduating high school, this second husband died. He'd been bed fast for a year, and the youngest still only remembers him vaguely. And those memories are of his daddy in the bed, sick.

Two of her sons  have passed away. One  had a tractor accident shortly after he graduated high school. Another son taught for one
year before getting sick suddenly.

He died before the next school year started. Leukemia. She said back then they'd just started with using chemotherapy and it hastened his death instead of helping.

I remember both those young men well.

She told us one story about pigs that kept us riveted, and I ain't kidding.

This woman is one tough cookie. 

She broke her hip two years ago, so she uses one of those walkers on wheels that has a seat. She said when she fell, she realized what pain was. Thought childbirth was, but said it didn't compare to this. The doctor told her she was a high risk patient because of her age and she might not wake up from surgery. She did, though. She's lived to tell the tale.

She quit driving at age ninety-two because of neuropathy in her feet. She was afraid she'd hit the wrong pedal.

She sits on her enclosed porch a lot. There are humming bird feeders, bird feeders, flowers. Entertainment of the best kind. She reads, but not as much as she used to, for she goes to sleep too easily reading and that aggravates her.

We took her out to dinner (not lunch!). She ate well. Talked to people who stopped by the table. We talked a lot about classmates and she had a story to tell about many of them.

I was worn out by the time I got home. I bet my friend was too, as he had to drive back to Atlanta.

I wonder if our teacher was tired, too.