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.He'd had six more years than his allotted three score andten, and simple people, I think, were surprised by the intensity of my grief.You must ham known his days were numbered, they were thinking.My days, too,then as now, and yours no less than mine.But love's not time's fool, the poet said.In its quiet way, our love was moreintense in old age than it had been when we started our new lives together.Wedid a lot of things then that we couldn't have done when the farm sucked upPage 116ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlall his daylight hours and some of the night and morning dark.After Chuck took over the farm, we went to see Picasso and Miro at a Chicagoexhibition in the late twenties, and Doc's view of the world was transformed.I taught him what I could of oil painting, and in the few years he had left,he quite surpassed me with his energetic primitivism.He didn't care Co showhis paintings; they were to him just a natural and necessary part of life.Hecould and should have been another late-bloomingWhistler.But he valued privacy far above praise, and I loved him for that asmuch as for anything else.So when I lost him it was a hammer blow.Of course I expected it, but it wasnever going to be this year, this week, this day.One day he woke feelingpoorly, and asked me to drive him to the doctor, and he died of a heart attackbefore we got there.And so I wandered back into the fold.I wasn't religious my Raven had cured meof believing in simple answers but old ladies have to do something or they'lldry up and blow away.I could hardly do missionary work anymore, but I was active in the church'sLadies' Auxiliary, mostly visiting the sick and the old with flowers andsweets, reading to them, commiserating.Last Sunday was Easter, and the night before, the minister had been rushed tothe hospital with appendicitis.An elder called and asked me whether, as theoldest member of the congregation, I would be willing to stand up and give afew words of witness.My heart was both melancholy and merry as I assured the respectfulcongregation that I faced death with equanimity, because I was certain thatdeath was not the end that we all would wind up in a quieter place, free ofpain and worry.I didn't tell them that they'd be sharing the place with sinners, not tomention dinosaurs and huge worms and creatures made of metal or vapors.Northat it was a gray plane that went on and on to no horizon.Some of that might have been in my voice, though.A lot of them were visiblyrelieved when I changed the subject and asked that we all offer a prayer ofhope for our men overseas, and God's guidance to General LeMay and his new airforce, that they not use the terrible weapons left over from World War II onKorea.Some faces hardened at that.But I didn't want to see Gordon's miracleof peace undone.Both Gordons, human and otherwise.I suppose it's time to stop, and let this document drift into the future.Futures.You who read it may choose to consider it fiction, or even delusion.There is always some truth in both.Page 117 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]