The Vigil

Lettie always seemed to be suffering from some permanent but unnamed illness.

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My Grandma Ollie was the youngest of 4 sisters – Lesta, Lettie, Bessie, and Ollie. She was also the only one of them to marry. But Lesta didn’t miss out on having children. She really helped raise my father, his brothers and sister, and later – me and my cousins. She was sort of an assistant mom and grandma to us.

Lesta lived with Lettie, just down the hill from Grandma, in the house where they were all born and raised. Lesta spent most of every day with Grandma Ollie. Bessie, was more worldly and sophisticated. She lived alone, in Bethany, and had a life-long career as a schoolteacher.

Lettie preferred her solitude.

Bessie and Lettie were both good people, and always nice to me and my cousins, but we weren’t as emotionally attached to them as we were to Lesta and Grandma Ollie. With Bessie, this was mostly because she lived in town, and we didn’t see her as much.

With Lettie, it was something else.

She was more distant from us than Bessie – even though we saw her far more often. Lettie always seemed to be suffering from some permanent, but unnamed illness. She spent a lot of her time, sitting in her rocker, lost in thought, or maybe pain. We never knew. Grandma and Lesta seemed to worry about her. Lesta, especially, was almost like a private nurse to Lettie. Grandpa Joe was not as worried. In fact, he often seemed impatient with her.

She was odd, a mystery.

I didn’t really think about it much. Sometimes I would hear the adults say things – remarks that made me think Lettie might be just imagining she was sick – a hypochondriac – though I didn’t know there was a word for it at the time.

A few years ago the mystery was revealed.

My Aunt Maudine informed me that some of the folks in Mt. Moriah, my hometown, were putting together a history of the town and it’s people. Amazing! Mount Moriah was a little town when it was founded in 1857, and, since then, it’s managed to grow smaller, yet. By 1988, the year of the book, the total population was 167 souls. And some of those might have been counted twice.

Nonetheless, the history came in at a hefty 446 pages.

Of course, I had to have a copy.

In due time it arrived, and the wonders continued. There, on the top of page 285 were three lines that astonished me. “Lettie was buried at Goshen cemetery, East of Mt. Moriah beside the young fellow she was to marry. He died when he was but twenty-one”.

What young fellow? This was news to me. I called Aunt Maudine. She said, “Oh my, yes! Lettie was never the same after her young beau died”.

Then she told me the whole story.

His name was Roy Clinkenbeard. He and Lettie were engaged to be married. He died, suddenly, of tuberculosis, in 1905. She pined for him the rest of her life. Once a month, my

Uncle Frank would drive her to the Goshen cemetery so she could put fresh flowers on his grave. She also made Uncle Frank and Aunt Maudine promise to see that she was buried beside him when she died.

She lived the rest of her life waiting for that moment.

At the time of his Roy’s death, she so distraught, her sisters and parents thought she might lose her mind. They sent her out to Washington for several years to live with Great Aunt Vira, in the hope that the change of environment would bring her relief. It didn’t.

Then, after she returned to Missouri, they set up a “Rose Garden” for her to work in to take her mind off it. That failed, too. (I remember that garden very well. But I always thought it was a pet project of Lesta’s, because she was the only one I ever saw work in it.) Eventually, they gave up. They learned to live with Lettie’s grief. The whole saga became an unspoken part of everyday life. I guess that’s why no one mentioned it to me.

Lettie was never consoled.

That’s why she was the way she was. She was about to be married, and could think of little else. Steadfast, patient, and single-minded, she kept her lonely vigil – while the years rolled on . . . and on . . . and on . . . until 1965.

On January 17th of that year, death came at last, and carried her away to Goshen –

and Roy.

No doubt, he was waiting for her at the altar.

By K. L. Shipley

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