Sam placed the Thanksgiving meal before his mother. She took a tiny bite, then removed the food from her mouth and pushed it into a napkin. Then she poked at the food for a bit before pushing the tray way from her, virtually untouched. It sat there on the table looking as dejected as Sams' mother.
Slowly, the rheumy eyes focused on Simmy and a story, held in an emotional vault for 55 years came out in a very sad telling. The story started with Mama Good & Honorable telling of how her wedding rings became, to her, a sad depiction of what the next 55 years of marriage would be for her.
She kept repeating, "We didn't get God's blessing! Some people don't believe in that but I knew that what happened to my wedding rings meant that we didn't get God's blessing."
She started crying. Simmy told Sam to go and comfort his mother but Sam stayed glued to his seat, staring at his mother. Now Sam was also battling a cold and flu virus so...
Simmy got up and pulled a chair close to Mama Good & Honorable and leaned her head on the old thin shoulder. The white gray head dropped onto Simmy's head and the crying became more serious now.
"I've never told anyone this story," she said. "Don't say nothing about it. I don't want Papa to get mad."
Now, Mama Good & Honorable has such bad hearing problems that it is getting difficult to communicate with her. She is also developing cataracts which is making reading difficult.
Simmy just sat in the ashes of the story told by Mama Good & Honorable and cried with her.
A soft conversation was taking place between an old couple in the same room and Simmy looked over to see the husband softly touching his wife's face and saying, "You're my sweetheart! I love you too."
Then the wife, with blue veined hands, fingernails painted in a lovely fashion said to the husband, "I'm so proud to be your wife!"
"I'm proud to be your husband too," was the reply from the care- giver spouse.
It was a strange thing to listen to a sad story in one ear and hear the opposite one, a loving musical, playing in the other ear.
As they wheeled Mama Good & Honorable up to her room she was murmuring, "I only see bad things now."
It was a difficult visit but in one very strange and odd way, Sam and Simmy left that old folks' home feeling thankful for ordinary things like...
the loving relationships with their children...
the true caring that was starting to develop in all of them...
the simple ability to offer a sympathetic ear...
the understanding of the importance of gentleness and sharing...
The song kept replaying and replaying in her mind... "It's the wedding of the painted doll..."
'It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.'
Laura Ingalls Wilder
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