When she talked about those tribulations back in 1937, her feeble voice crackled with both age and emotion. With over 70 years separating them from now, the grief still lingered, but wisdom had covered it like moss on a riverbank.
In those days, the poor were really poor, their backbones hollow from lack of food, and their brows heavy with the kind of worry that will drive a man to an early grave. Some did die, leaving behind poor, fragile widows and a passel of half-starved young’uns to cry mournfully over their raggedy remains. Around those hand-dug graves filled with rough, hand-hewn pine boxes, folks gathered to pray and sing Amazing Grace as it rained. It always rained. Their lives, it seemed, were filled with rain.
“Lookin’ back,” she said softly, “The Lord knowed what he was doin’.”
But back then, it didn’t seem like that at all. She married young at 16 to the handsome boy, Scots-Irish, just like her, whom she would love until death put it asunder 75 years later. Those first years were hard, not only physically but also spiritually, as they struggled to form a life among the depression-smothered foothills of the Southern Appalachians.
In detail, she recalled it all on that morning she telephoned early.
“Somethin’ just told me to call you,” she said. “I hate to hinder you ‘cause I know you’re always so busy, but I just wanted to talk to you.”
Because I have sadly learned that time with loved ones can be fleetingly short, I, without hesitation, sat down on a step on the stairway with a cup of coffee and settled into an hour’s hour-long conversation. I shrugged off deadlines, project negotiations, and business calls for something more urgent, more important.
For she knows things about our family that, if she doesn’t tell me now, might be gone forever should God call her before He does for me.
Aunt Ozelle is Mama’s oldest sister, who, at 93, has outlasted all those who knew her when she was a child or when she was dewy with youth. Throughout her living, she has seen a lot of life, the good, the bad, the sad, and the happy. Somehow, for some reason, we started in on the tragic that morning.
For over 60 years, she taught Sunday School, and she lived in the same place where she taught. She’s such a Bible scholar that even preachers, including my daddy, often sought her guidance on understanding a scripture. She will tell you, plain and simple, it is her faith that has undergirded her and taken her down through the sometimes rough journey of life.
They struggled just to stay alive, she said, while living in a little rented house on someone else’s farm. Foxes ate all their chickens, their beloved collie dog disappeared, a little heifer that Paw-paw had given them for milk and butter caught its head between a post and the floor, and choked to death. The day before her first baby was born, in desperation, Aunt Ozelle dropped to her knees and prayed.
“I asked that God’s will be done. Whatever that was.”
The next day, she struggled through prolonged, arduous childbirth as a midwife attended. Finally, the baby was born, cried, took her first breath, and then moments later took her last breath.
“I couldn’t be angry with God, and I wasn’t. I had asked that His will be done.”
Thirteen months later, a healthy baby boy was born. Two months later, he died of instant pneumonia.
“I carried the greatest burden in my heart, but looking back, I know God knew what He was doin’. I don’t know how we would have fed those children. Times were so hard.”
It is the legacy of my family, one that encompasses both humble beginnings and a steadfast faith. May we never forget.
Best-selling author Ronda Rich has now said a teary goodbye to Aunt Ozelle, who promised, “I’ll meet you across the River Jordan.”