Hello in There – Inspired by John Prine

 

I went to a funeral last week for a dear friend I have known almost my whole life.  I knew her as a kind, soft-spoken, talented lady – a lady in every sense of the word.  I knew she played the piano and sang like an angel.  What I didn’t know was that her life story was equal to a Hallmark movie.  Or that she was a poet.  Or that she saved her wedding shoes for 78 years and asked that she be buried with them.  I regret now that I didn’t make more effort to visit and spend time with her.  She was one of those people who, in the words of Eduardo Galeano, “blazed with life so fiercely that you just can’t look at them without blinking and whoever approaches them, will light right up.”

Mildred and Lloyd were married on Christmas eve and one week of married life before he had to report for duty in the military.  They didn’t see each other again until four years later.  When he returned, he threw pebbles at her upstairs window and she came downstairs and snuck him into her room at the boarding house.  At her funeral, her nephew read a portion of the letter Lloyd wrote on the night before he shipped out for Europe.  Turns out, he was a poet too.  And that letter was buried with Mrs. Mildred too. 

Four years.  There was no zoom then, no facebook, no texting, not even much phone service between Europe and Tennessee.  Just long days and lonely nights of uncertainty, and a dread that there might be a knock on a door.  They were truly the greatest generation.

I was lucky to be well acquainted with an older lady in our church in my younger years.  She was one of the kindest people I knew and one of the best cooks!  Mrs. Annie would occasionally invite Robert and me to come and eat supper.  Supper was an inadequate word for the feast she would prepare.  She made, hands down, the best caramel pie on the planet.  O’Charley’s caramel pie pales in comparison.  I loved her stories of her family’s life on their farm near Duck River.  She and her husband lived in a big white two-story house with eleven rooms.  In the 1948 flood of Hickman County, the water rose in the house to just shy of five feet.  They had to use the hog scalder to float to the stairs and take refuge on the second floor, where they lived for several days.  Mrs. Annie learned to drive when she was 68 and drove herself to town and back for the next twenty years.    She was a marvelous lady. 

I have written before about my great- grandmothers, who enjoyed very different lives – one as a farm wife and the other who raised her family in town.  Both were left widowed at a fairly young age and both had full lives for almost 30 years after losing their husbands.  Looking back now, I think I drew on their example when I lost my husband after too few years together.   I wish I had had more time with them at an age when I could have appreciated conversations about their younger lives.  Second hand stories and old letters carefully saved will have to do. 

One of the greatest experiences I had was a class I took in the late eighties on “Reminiscence Writing.”  I traveled 30 miles to Columbia State Community College each week for a couple of months with four other Hickman County residents to learn under Maury County history guru Jill Garrett.  I was the youngest in the group.  I had no idea what a blessing it would be to listen to the stories Jill coaxed out of all the people in the class, especially those people I already knew and loved.

I wish I could sit down with my grandparents one more time and listen to stories of their courtship and early married life.  I wish I could sit on the porch with old horseman Bob Womack on another summer afternoon and listen to him tell about great horses he had known.  I wish I could sit in our yard and listen to my cousin Emmett Thompson tell, in a way only he could, about his life in early Centerville. I wish I could eat another piece of Mrs. Annie's caramel pie and ask her a few more questions about life along Duck River.   

We don’t think much about older people as people who were once young and romantic and in love.  We don’t think enough about what people went through during their growing up years that included a depression, or a world war, or a smallpox epidemic, or all three.  We don’t think enough about the people who lost precious children in senseless wars. In our busyness, we ignore the stories they can tell and the lessons they can teach us.  We need to do better.  We need to follow John Prine’s admonition to at least say “Hello in there.”  We might just be surprised at what we get in return.

 

“You know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello"

“So if you're walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there, hello"

Hello in There, John Prine