Raconteur

Raconteur

by Noel R. Bodenmiller

For Betty, A Caregiver Extraodinaire

For all my Grandchildren, may they live long and happy lives.

Copyright (c) 2013 Noel R. Bodenmiller

A Collection of Stories, Novels and Works

All Part of Life

Table Of Contents

Firewood And Growing Up Cold

When I Was Difficult To Care For

On My Mother's Passing

Vague Remembrances

Authentic Treasures

Captain Stevenson's Secret

Return To Stevenson's Isle

Stevenson’s Reward

Looking For You

Sounds Of My Heart

Chronological Index Of Journal Entries

Works By The Author

Smashwords Edition

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Cover:  Three Rivers, California, Sequoia National Park, Gateway Restaurant and Lodge

(c) 2013 Noel R. Bodenmiller

FIREWOOD AND GROWING UP COLD

Our Grandparents and parents had an outhouse in the backyard and the grandparents always had a water bucket in the kitchen, near the sink, with a ladle that everyone in the family used, to drink water. No talk then, of backwash, it was just the way you drank water anytime you were thirsty.

The water was brought into the house by bucket from the long-handled, cast-iron, outside water pump that always needed proper priming from the rusty can of water you kept near the pump in the summer. In the dead of winter, when temperatures hovered around zero degrees, that can or jar of water had to come back to the well from the house, otherwise it would become useless when frozen. In the winter it helped a little to heat the water on the wood-burning cook stove. The hot water that you poured into the pump-head then had a chance to melt and soften ice that had formed part way down the pump around the surface of the leather valve. Many times the first priming didn’t 'catch' and you ran the risk of running out of primer water.

On a rare occasion, the well was just dry and you had to do without for a few days or weeks. Given time, the water would return, which was one of the benefits of living only a mile from the lake. Sometimes the water supply in the well varied with the prevailing winds around the lake, some times not. Shame on you if you were the last one to pump water and you did not replenish the can with primer water. This usually done with the first clear water that appeared after several upward and downward noisy motions of the long pump handle.

Most folks in the area lived a good mile or more from a neighbor, some friendly, some not. Sometimes you had to swallow some pride and borrow primer water from a neighbor if you forgot to save some or you used it all when the well was too dry to pump. It happened to everybody from time to time, it was all part of life. The pump was far from the house, in fact it was way over by the barn near where grandpa kept his dairy cattle. One of the cows had kicked out my dad's front teeth when he was a kid and I don't think his dental bridge was ever very comfortable. Later in life, he had the teeth pulled and seemed to be pleased when that ordeal was over and had gotten used to his new dentures.

Mimi (grandmother) had chickens that seemed to run in a free-range fashion around the homestead and it was interesting to watch old Shep keep them out of danger and away from the dirt road that ran close to the front of the old house. My grandparents raised six sons and two daughters in the little home and my father's sister, my Aunt Amelia, still resides on the homestead, but in a more modern home. My mother, in contrast, was an only child and had lived in at least five different homes that I know of, one twice.

It was our custom to have a truckload of coal delivered to our property in the fall and the kids would shovel the coal from the newly dumped pile in front of the bin door into the coal bin. Hopefully there would be enough of the dirty stuff to last through the entire winter. Later, in the snowy months, it was also our job to break through the snowdrifts from the back door, all the way to the barn and coal shed. Once there, one would load up the scuttles with coal and then return to the house fighting the bitter, sometimes sleet-filled wind, that made your skin raw with its coldness, stinging and beating on your exposed face, to and from the barn. I remember well, that when this task first fell to me that I could only manage one scuttle at a time. This meant many trips for me and I came to understand at an early age, the saying What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. You didn't dare stumble and spill the coal into the snow or the snow-covered coal could ruin a red-hot, cast-iron pot-bellied stove. I remember that happened at least once, but I swear it wasn't me that did it. I remember someone shouting how ice covered frozen-firewood had the same effect. But I swear I didn't do it. I knew better.

We had two heating stoves in the old un-insulated farmhouse and it took a lot of dry coal to keep them alive. It took more trips to the coal bin then one could stand, especially in a holey pair of rubber boots and wet shoes that always seemed too small. Once wet and again dried, they always shrunk a little and curled up at the toe and never fit your foot right again. They were painful to wear once that had happened to them. There was always a pan or a kettle with water on each stove that evaporated to raise the moisture content in the air. To live in such a fashion seemed to take up a good portion of your time, but I remember we could still find some time to read, although the lighting was usually less than enough. We had one light bulb per room.

As I aged, I proudly was able to carry six scuttles. All filled to the top as three thin steel handles of the buckets dug into the palm and fingers of each hand. It saved going thrice along that long distance to the barn in the dark both before dawn and after nightfall. You had to feel around for a good shovel-full with the shovel itself, but you always had a good sense for when the buckets were full, as spilling coal on the floor inside the bin was permitted. Just don't let it happen anywhere else. You had to make sure to spin the sometimes frozen little latch board on the bin door that kept rain and snow away from the coal. I was the youngest of many and when I eventually left home, two new gas heaters immediately replaced the coal stoves. The barn eventually collapsed, I don't know if there was still coal in it or not. I never looked to see, as I neither loved nor missed coal.

I did mention the cook stove, didn't I? This needed a completely different source of fuel but still was composed from the carbon element, in this case, firewood. Now, we are not talking about power tools here. We had a crosscut saw that could be handled by one person, for cutting small branches up to about five inches in diameter. This saw could teach you many lessons and it was the first one to take both meat and skin from the area of my left thumb. It tended to jump sideways a bit as you made your first passes on a piece of hard oak. I still bear the scar but I did learn to not let my hand stay so close to the saw cut. This wood you could cut directly from a felled tree, but to get the best action from the saw it was much better to also have a cross-shaped wooden sawhorse to hold the wood still and keep it from rolling back and forth with the saw, while you kept your hand clear of the process. Sawhorses were usually constructed from leftover lumber. Spikes were used to construct the four-legged affair and it was portable enough to drag across the snow to wherever the tree had fallen.

The best wood was old dead stuff, but not so old that there was rot and no heat left in it. We didn't own a double-bit axe when it fell to my turn to do the chopping but that was just as well, as they were really too dangerous for a young boy to weld. Instead, we had a single-bit that seemed to have a mind of its own when I first faced the challenge to provide firewood for the cook stove. Of course, when we ran out of coal the firewood had to provide us with heat as well, and we had to provide more wood with the axe and the crosscut saw. This was a little more difficult then it sounds as the wood was best when seasoned and more importantly it had to fit into the small coal stove designed to burn small pieces of coal. This was loaded into the small opening behind the upper door that was just large enough to allow the scuttle spout to be shook gently into the small chamber located above the grates.

Green wood (meaning that wood which was still alive when harvested) was not only useless as a heat source but also dangerous because of the sap content, which would reform on the inner walls of stovepipes and chimneys, later to reignite as a super hotspot that would destroy the safety barrier between chimney and house timber. The wood had to be short and narrow to fit into the stove. If you could load more into this small space, it would last longer between servicing. This brings us to the splitting of the wood. For this purpose, we had an eight-pound sledgehammer and two steel wedges. Two in case the first one remained stuck in the wood without the wood splitting completely into two pieces.

Later in my adult life I was introduced to a device called a splitting maul, which was a combination of the sledge and wedge and resembled what one would call a really heavily weighted, blunted axe, or I guess you could say it was a pointed sledgehammer, weighing only about seven pounds. I wish I had had one of these instead of the eight-pound sledge and wedges. Just getting the wedge started into a striking position could be a little struggle because you had to convince the wedge to stick upright while holding it with one hand and lifting and letting go of the sledge with the other. This action had to be carried out with just enough coordination and strength not to bring the sledge down on your hand, but with enough force to set the wedge. Once set, you were ready to swing the heavy sledge over your head. Many times the wood was stubborn enough to cause a glancing blow to go awry and one, sledge or wedge, would strike you heavily in an ankle or toe. The splitting mall was easier to swing in a full circular motion and accuracy was a little less important, as to effect a split, one only has to hit the wood itself, not a wedge. As I stated, I didn’t find this tool until later in life when I wore out a few malls providing heat for my own little family.

Tending the fire was a simple task but not done without caution. You had to make sure the stove didn't get so hot that you would ruin it. Airflow was quite important with these cast-iron pot-bellied stoves and there was more than one way to affect this. Earlier I mentioned the grates. This was an interior device, which separated the hot coals of the fire from the ash drawer located in a lower position inside the stove. At this location, there was another heavy door that one unlatched and opened to take out the ashes and clinkers. These were usually red-hot at the time and moved with care to a different location far away from the barn where the coal was housed. We dumped these fairly close to our two-hole outhouse while still hot, but with care not start a fire on a windy day. This became quite a tall pile in the winter and had to be moved again in the spring to the fields to help fertilize the garden-plots.

There was either a place at the side of the stove or just inside the lower door where you inserted a crank to move the grates back and forth to rid the base of the fire of the air-blocking ashes and clunkers from the coal and wood. You did this often, whenever the heat from the stove became diminished. Your legs and feet were constantly cold but your face usually warm due to the drafty conditions of our worn, poorly fit single-pane windows. You had a tendency to stand next to the stove and rotate while getting a view out the east and then the west window, while seeking to warm one side of your body and then the other. It was sort of like slow cooking a hog on a spit, if you know what I mean. On extremely cold days, you didn’t get very far from the stove and you seemed to risk setting your pants on fire.

Built into stove's lower door was an opening that could be closed or opened in varying positions to regulate airflow. Above the stoves, there were also damper flaps to regulate the exhaust and therefore slow the flow of air through the fire and up the stovepipes and then into the chimneys. Wise operating of these regulators was extremely important to the fire and to the inhabitants. Closing the damper in the stovepipe a little too much slowed the fire so much you could end up with the house full of black, black smoke. If this happened in the daytime, it usually wasn’t fatal. But it would sure ruin your day, especially on laundry days when all the damp clothing from the wash would be hanging from corner to corner on the ever-present crisscrossing cords we had in the kitchen and living room. All of that re-washing and cleaning of rooms happened at least once a year. Sometimes the wind could make a sudden shift with the same effect.

Mom was a hard worker, and she expected equal effort from all of us. I'm pretty sure she never received it...nobody worked as hard as she did. My father always worked two jobs, getting up at four-fifteen a.m. to go to the first one and would stop by the house for a quick supper on the way to the second. In the summer, he would leave the driver's door open on the Plymouth to let allow it to stay a little cooler while he ate. Then he would come home from the second job at about ten o'clock and be ready for bed. He would fall asleep during the sermon on Sundays, it wasn't hard to figure out why.

My parents were tough people. They had survived the worldwide plague, two world wars, the Great Depression and more. The depression taught them a way of life that they never forgot and they continued to live as though it never ended. And they were careful people, my father living until his mid-seventies and my mother survived his death to live on to the age of ninety-seven. All five of my siblings are well, as of this writing, and I being the youngest, have reached the age of sixty-five. We continued to follow our parent's advice to use care, if quality of life is at least partially defined by length, we're doing alright.

I failed to mention the big saw. It was about seven feet long, maybe longer. It had a handle on each end that was tall and narrow so you could use both hands, one above the other. It was heavy and wobbly and had to be used by two people at the same time. Moreover, it was all about timing and pulling. If you pushed back, hardly at all, the saw would bind up in the cut you were making.

With this saw, the size of a tree had no limit. You and the fellow on the other end of the saw had to work in concert, each taking their turn to pull, not push, the saw as far as their arms could pull past their twisting bodies, counting on the counter-pull to bring their countenance full forward again over and over until somebody finally called for a rest. Neither wanting to be the first to say uncle. Some uncles later, there would be a few heavy chunks of wood ready for splitting. Sometimes we would cheat a little if we had some old used motor oil. This we would apply toward the center of the long saw blade. This seemed to help a little but not for long, but there was never enough of the oil around. We rarely worried about the saws getting rusty. They were used year around, through sweat and frost. What would have been more helpful, would have been frequent sharpening and fewer old nails left behind from earlier years when the trees had been used for fence posts or hunting stands or for hanging clothes lines.

My mother used to invent things out of necessity. I know you are thinking of the old timeworn phrase 'necessity is the mother of invention' when I say this. She really did invent by 'making do' in most situations. It was her way of life and so it was ours too. There were many cobbled together fixes of broken handles on tools and such, and much of this had developed before I came along. A lot of it looked normal to me. It was an acceptable practice when you didn't want to waste money on something new. Almost every handle on every tool had a replaced over or undersized screw or bolt that made the tools a little hazardous to use. Others were taped together. Even handles on kitchen knives were missing and only the rivets meant to hold the wooden handles onto the knives or spoons or forks were still present. Wooden knobs were either missing on the covers of the pots and pans or had been replaced by a sewing thread spool. They were attached with a bolt and nut that would burn your hand if you grabbed it wrong.

Kettle handles were missing too, so you 'made do' by using a hot pad in each hand to lift them. We had a lot of hot pads. The cracked black cast-iron skillets could still be used for some duties so they never made it to the garage. The garage hadn’t seen a car since the Model-T era and was filled with many old things that could not be thrown away. Inside the garage, one could only stumble from one end to the other and marvel at the accumulation of things that were always in the way of getting to something else that might prove useful.

With the firewood and coal stoves going full blast, mother would poke dad's old un-savable work socks into the cracks around the front door with a table knife, which saw double-duty when left shoved under the molding and over the door to further secure the door from the cold and strangers. All the doors off the living room had to remain closed during the day in the winter. When it was bedtime for everyone, we were allowed to open the door to the stairway and to my parent’s bedroom. Mother would keep a foot-square thin slab of marble that had a fold-down thin handle on the stove during the day. When she and dad turned in for the night she would wrap the marble slab inside a blanket and slide it under the covers by their feet.

The family always wore long johns under our clothes and put on a second pair of socks before slipping between the sheets at night. We had old, 'picky' woolen army blankets that would make you itch if you let them touch your skin. If you were lucky enough to have your own bed, you also had quarter-inch thick ice form on the inside of the window just behind your head. It formed from our breath and the vapor from the cans of water on the stoves (we had no solid wood headboards to block the cold air). As you tried to get to sleep, while trying to quiet your shivers, you first entered into the fetal position under the sheets and blankets with whatever clothes you had worn that day, piled on top of the blankets.

The so-called heater in our upstairs bedroom was the stovepipe that came up through the living room ceiling and exited out the upstairs wall into the chimney. There was also a small metal grate in the floor that we were allow to open at night to allow some heat up from the living room down below. My sister and grandmother had their own rooms just past the boy’s but with no stovepipe or grate. Such was the price of privacy, no heat.

Today you hear about 'brain freeze' when people drink icy beverages. We had something like that every night in the winter with the added pleasure of seeing your breath above you in the morning especially if the fires died out in the night. There were no rugs in our house except in the parlor and nobody went in there. It was full of family keepsakes and furniture no one sat on. The door pretty much remained closed year around and in the winter ice formed on the parlor ceiling, which was just below grandmother’s bedroom.

Even with an extra pair of woolen socks you could feel the cold of the flooring when your feet hit the floor in the morning, you got dressed in a hurry. No showering, you just got going down to breakfast and the coal stove as fast as you could. Mother always got up to cook dad’s breakfast at about four-fifteen to begin her day and she wouldn’t stop working until eleven o’clock at night. I always remember her as rather thin and I suspect work was the reason. My mother loved books and in her later years, she collected more of them when she had time. She had filled most of the remaining space in the parlor with books before she passed on.

My dad always worked two jobs, so it was my mother who taught me to use a saw, split wood, hammer a bent nail, darn dad’s work socks, crochet a rug from unrepairable socks, sew by hand, shoot a rifle and a whole lot more. We had neighboring birthdays and now I miss her a great deal. I can still hear her expressions of pain when she would quickly remove her raw, cracked fingers from new, hot soapy dishwater. With six children around there were continually many dishes to wash. Her fingers never had a chance to heal over the winter with the dry heat we had and the extreme temperatures endured when one went from one room to another. She was a constant worker, even insisting on shoveling her own sidewalk into her early nineties, stating, this is what I do when you would try to take the snow shovel away from her.

I understand there are many people who still live in this fashion, not by choice, as she did, but because it is all they have, and they must do so. My mother made great sacrifices during her life that were not always necessary, but rather out of fear of the hard times and she hoped to leave something of value to her children. My siblings and I have had many successes and blessings and she was the reason why.

There are times when I wonder what I accomplished with the lifetime I was given. I tried to remember the good times of my childhood and I've created a short list. The earliest of these good memories is recorded in a picture somewhere in the family archives. I was with my grandmother Gravier in West Palm Beach, Florida. In the picture, we're enjoying a day at the beach with a little bucket and shovel as I attempted my first and only sand castle. While I don't own any original pictures of this Florida vacation, I do retain some images of this time in my mind. Like the time my dad and I sat on a dock nearby, on a different day, with a very small fishing pole trying to catch a fish. We would bait the hook with some other chopped up fish and watch through the clear water as the fish picked carefully at the bait until every morsel was gone. We left there fishless but I did learn what happens when you fish. As I said, I don’t have a picture of this, but I do have a memory.

My other memory of Florida involved striking a few keys on the piano, which apparently led to eight years of avoiding practice and piano lessons.

In Michigan, my earliest fond memory involved airplane rides. My sister would grab my ankle in one hand and a wrist with the other, then swing me around and around until she tired and let me land with a thump onto the grass.

Another memory is of the time I was hunting my brother with a bb gun for some reason. I don't remember why I was now, but he got me before I found him, lurking around the sheds. He shot an arrow intending to strike just ahead of my position, but I still have a dimple where it punctured my face, just where a dimple should be.

Another brother took some time to burn a few hardballs, thrown very deftly into an old hand-me-down thoroughly worn-out catcher's mitt, while trying to coach me to do a better job with my school work and grades. I'm pretty sure this was done at my mother's behest, not the pitching certainly, but the encouragement, surely.

Poor mom, raising six children...I remember the frozen laundry, not quite dry of course, sticking firmly to the long clothesline that ran between the back porch and the barn, held up with a long tree branch. This pole, being thin and in the middle of the driveway, was wiped out by one of the young drivers in the family, every so often.

I had other jobs or duties in my youth. We sold garden produce in the front yard by the road, including rhubarb, string beans, strawberries, peaches, carrots, sweet corn, pears and other things. With this came our first lessons in the counting of money and how to make change and something too, about its value. Mother also had a vast flower garden that was always admired by visitors and passerbys.

I worked at a boat marina when I was eleven, turning aluminum fishing boats on their sides and washing out rotting dead minnows and dead worms and smelly fishguts. In my freshmen year in high school I got a job as a stock-boy in a paint store that involved a lot of heavy lifting of four gallon cases of paint and moving them about in a dirt floored basement that was too short to stand up in. I did that job for about four years, but I also learned to wait on customers and how to tint paint and how to give advice on brush choice for all types of paint or varnish.

I also learned how to paint from my mother and I did a lot of it, and became quite adept at interior and exterior work. I've had vast working experiences in comparison to others, but I know I still never matched all that my mother could accomplish in her day.

I enjoyed reading Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer and a book I remember to be titled ‘Motor Cycle Chums in China’. Later in my early teens, I ran across a box of books that an older brother dropped off during his twenty years in the air force. These included a lot of Ian Fleming’s 007 stories and various titles of the science fiction genre, all of which provided unusual information about the world for a young, inquisitive mind.

I remember receiving two presents from my Godparents, Harold and Helen Barton, on two separate Christmases. One was a little yellow wind-up bulldozer, which I hurriedly took out into the snow. Another year they gave me a battery operated, large metal passenger plane with flashing lights that moved slowly about on it wheels. Perhaps it was not as practical as the toy bulldozer, but it was still very nice, to get a present for Christmas. I held the Godparents both in high esteem and sometimes Mr. Barton or one of his sons, would let me take a ride with them on their farm tractor across the field, making lots of dust while hanging on for dear life.

My friends George and Jerry Jondro and Robert, Bill, and Tommy Trombley, would get together and play backyard football, or grab a few sticks and fight a war with some imaginary army. Once we built a little fort from tree limbs and leaves, but it didn't last long. Mrs. Trombley and Mrs. Jondro were good cooks and I always enjoyed being invited in for dinner before the long walk home. Later I bought a used three-speed bicycle for ten dollars. The money came from working my first job at the boat marina where I earned thirty-five cents an hour. Later I was well pleased to earn minimum wage at Acme paint store (one dollar and a quarter per hour). Imagine my delight when learning that I would earn fifty-seven hundred dollars in my first year of teaching.

I absolutely hated grade school and practically everything about it. I hated almost all of the teachers that I had for the first seven years. My report cards reflected this sentiment directly with extremely low or failing grades in every subject for all those seven miserable years.

I hated being made fun of and I was always very private about my body and my thoughts. I was pale skinned and small and enjoyed only as much protection as my older sister could provide while busily pursuing her own early teen-age life. It was truly a blessing that my sister and time separated me from my somewhat older siblings. For the most part, they were high achievers with great minds and in turn, some of them contributed to advancements in American life and the sciences. Tough acts to follow, as they say. I always considered that most of my siblings had enjoyed great accomplishment and I continue to refer to them with pride.

In the last year of elementary school, I did well under the tutelage of the new Mother Superior, Sister Mary Ferdinand, a patient and kind teacher who knew how to get things done without constant threats of violence. Unfortunate for me, that she came to my school so late in my formative years. High School did little to help my attitude, as I hated every year spent there but the last. I always feared my teachers and the older students who made it their business to harass younger students to no end. When I became a senior student, I did not continue this custom, although many of my classmates did. It seemed as though this school saved the best instructors for the senior classes, where once again I achieved a little more.

Post high school education followed at a brand new college that I felt was trying to make a name for itself as had my high school, and again, I had a poor time of it, while working two, sometimes three. part-time jobs. Things did get better later. College graduation came, and in time with great effort, postgraduate work was completed.

Well, that's about it for good memories. Later, when approaching middle age, I found that I had repressed a few memories for many years, but these were somewhat informative as they slowly came back to me. However, I found that it is a poor choice to dwell on those, it is better to move forward. They say that when senility starts to set in, you remember more of the old as though it happened just yesterday, so far, so good, nothing old to report.

WHEN I WAS DIFFICULT TO CARE FOR

For my mother Catherine, I wrote the following letter to her primary caregiver, a very special person, who offered unlimited care and devotion during Catherine's declining years:

An Inspiration from Catherine to Noel, for Betty Coci.

From a mother who could no longer speak, through a son who tried to listen, written to the one who always cared.

March 7, 2008

Dear Betty,

I hope that you are confident after my passing from this world to the next, that you did the very best that you could have while caring for me. I know that I was more than difficult at times but I also know that only you could give so much to another.

You saved my life countless times and extended my life from the moment we met, so many years ago at Harborside. You followed me, unasked to Bedford, merely wanting a chance to say goodbye and good luck to a person you had just befriended in such an unselfish fashion at a tough time in my life.

Well, I was the lucky one, you made time to come and see me, just when I needed you so much. And then you made time in your busy life to come and save mine.

You gave more to me than ever a son or daughter could, you were my caregiver and for this I will always love you and keep you in my heart and mind and soul.

While others would not care for me or were not strong enough to care for me, you did.

While others wavered in their sense of duty and devotion to me, you grew one.

So much of life involves whether we do something or not and understanding what is important and what is not. You know this, Betty, because you are wise.

You shared my faith and struggle to live and supported my strengths when others had given up on me.

My hope is that there will be someone there for you, should this terrible disease come to you or your loved ones.

I am sorry that this is the best I can do to tell you how much I needed you and that you helped me so much.

You were there to guard me from the abuse from others, friend, foe or relative, you served me well.

You let me gaze into your eyes when I was confused. You cared enough to learn of my family and remind me who I was and who and where they all were so many, many times.

You let me touch your hair, when I might pull it too hard or would not let go. But you allowed it to happen anyway, even though I might hurt you, damage you, soil you.

You loved me that much. Even though you were not mine, not my kin. Not mine to touch, to hurt, to soil.

You let me believe you were a part of me when family was not there, and I was loved with all your caring gestures.

When my family tired, you cared for me

When I could not feed myself, wash myself or clean up my many mistakes, you did.

When I was angry about everything and nothing, you consoled me and calmed me.

When I was joyful, you were there to laugh with me.

When I deserved pity, you felt for me.

You lied beside me when others would have been repulsed by my condition, just to give me comfort and let me know you were there even when you were tired too.

It probably never occurred to you that others could not do such a simple, yet unselfish act.

You always kept my wellbeing in the forefront while caring as much for your own family and their needs. (Thank you, Caroline and family)

How you did it all so well, is beyond me, but I’m so thankful that you chose me among all others, to become my personal angel of mercy. Yes, I will always remember the angels.

Thank you again for being where my family could not, as this disease ripped so at their hearts, to watch my sudden decline. I too hated to lose my memories so quickly.

I have seen so much in life that I guess I became fearful; World wars, the plague, the Great Depression, and more wars and other dreadful, hopeless events over 97 years.

In my eyes, the world was a harsh place and I was determined to protect my family from it. You heard about my many warnings to them: stay out of the water, be careful crossing those railroad tracks, are you sure you want to do that? and more.

I became frugal, because I feared losing some things that I felt must pass on to my children for their security and safety.

This is how I feared for my children’s welfare and this is how I loved my children.

You could see this, Betty, when others could not, because you are wise.

My fears caused such anxiety, that for years, I have not rested. Not until you taught me that, I could.

You gave me back confidence, that someone really would be there for me and give me everything I need.

Your great patience helped me conquer my fears.

Instead of demanding something from me, you let me rest, for the first time in my life.

Thank you for not being afraid to love and to touch and to hug, and to kiss and to show such wonderful gentleness to someone who so resisted trusting the world.

It took a whole lifetime to meet you and the following five years to unwind, to find peace, to laugh aloud and to fall asleep without worry. My nightly acts of contrition fell by the wayside as I gained confidence that I could reawaken in peace in this world or the next. I had finally learned to trust and to rest.

Perhaps you took me under you wing of care because you saw a fearful old women or you thought I was interesting or maybe it was love at first sight.

I know that my little quirk of help it became a challenge to all, to be near me.

But you took that in stride and never failed in your complete attention to my needs even under such stressful conditions.

You were the one who stood up and spoke openly when you saw danger from other patients or cruel staff members who would have abused me had I been left alone to their care.

You were there because only you could be in this place, at this time, in my life.

Betty, you did all this because you love me, truly love me, and I always wanted you to know, even when I couldn’t always tell you, it felt good.

I love you too,

Your friend, now with God,

Catherine

P.S. Please share these thoughts with Nikki (Jones) and Rabecca (Soss) and thank them for their patience and care. They always tried to do as you did for