Mrs. N

I wanted to use the real name, but the last time I wrote about a person (besides Ray), family members somehow took umbrage, contacted me, and asked me to remove a link to the post off of Facebook. I complied with their request because I'm that kind of guy. That piece, however, was a simple account of two men sitting on a porch in the little town of Cascilla chatting about the past. How anyone could find that offensive is beyond me, but I learned a long time ago that when people's emotions are involved, leave, just leave. Apparently, they didn't actually read the writing but assumed it must have been negative. I think that says more about their attitude towards their "loved one" than it does about what I wrote. So in this non-fictional portrait of a relationship I had with an old woman in a small delta town, I will refrain from using proper nouns for her or the town she resided in. I am sure she has since passed from this earth, but you never know who reads a blog post and surely she has kin around somewhere. I had rather not offend anyone else.

For twenty-nine years, I worked as a termite man which meant I crawled under houses. Yes, that grew old in a hurry. I did this job while I went to school, pastored a church, and raised a family. It may be strange, but there were a couple of things I really liked about that job. One was I got to travel. By travel, I mean that I went everywhere within about a fifty-mile radius of Greenwood. I learned roads, town and country, that I never would have known had I not worked for All-Delta Pest Control. That is something I always enjoyed. I went through all the little towns, drove all the back roads, and saw all the scenery our State has to offer within that area. These were, for the most part, sights that no one travels from far away to see, although I think they should because they are interesting and sometimes beautiful. A fifty-mile radius, I might add, is a lot more territory than it sounds like. The second thing I liked and I miss from that job was getting to meet people. Although I am not really a people person, I enjoyed that aspect of the job and occasionally developed a bond with a customer here and there and looked forward to my return trip to that house each year.

One such person I met and slowly developed a relationship with was Mrs. N who lived in a delta town on the outskirts of our territory. I drove to that village exactly once per year. My first trip there, I sold Mr. and Mrs. N a termite job and then treated their large aristocratic-looking house for the wood destroying insects. That first year, I dealt primarily with the husband who was a pleasant man whom I supposed to be in his mid-seventies. I asked him if there was a cafe in town. He told me there was and where to find a good lunch. I asked what kind of people they, the owners, were. His smile at my question stands out in my memory. "They're not too tuff," he said, apparently taking some amusement at my quaint question.

On the second year, my interaction with Mrs. N was brief. She simply said, "Pray for Ralph. He's not long for this world." When I came back a year later, Ralph had passed and Mrs. N was very eager for me to come inside and have coffee. At that time, I was in our denomination's Ministerial Internship Program and they were constantly lecturing us about staying away from women, they are dangerous, they will get you into trouble. But when I drove away that day, I knew in my heart that I had done the wrong thing, and I purposed in my soul that if she wanted to have coffee the next year, I would accept her invitation.

Year four she wanted to have coffee. I went inside, and we sat in her kitchen, and I drank coffee I didn't really want and listened to her talk. I didn't mind the listening part. Thus began a ritual. Every year when I went back for the annual termite inspection, she would make coffee and place food on a plate in front of me. I sipped coffee, ate, and listened. Sometimes the treats were homemade cake or pie, sometimes real food. At other times it was Little Debbie stuff, but there was always plenty of it, and I ate it all thankfully. And listened. It didn't take a socket rientist to realize she was lonely and simply wanted someone to take a little time and sit and listen to her. I'm not a talker, but I can do the listening part.

I don't remember much of what she said over all those years, but I do recall a couple of things. The first time I went in, she told me about Ralph and how she thought he would have lived longer if he had not gone through the chemo. Then another time, I looked out the window and noticed her car. Since I owned the same make and model, a Chevrolet Celebrity, I remarked, "I like your car." That set her off telling me where she found it, how she made the deal, and why she liked it. "And it's not Japanese," she added.

Surprised, I asked, "You don't like Japanese cars?" I thought everybody liked Japanese cars.

"Those sons of b****es stole four years of my life," she shot back.

And that was my first encounter with someone who held a grudge with the Japanese over World War II. I can understand. She and Mr N were newlyweds, in love, just starting their life together, and then Ralph was snatched away for four years. I understand, I just had just never encountered that sentiment.

My dad had two brothers who fought in WWII. One, Bo, survived the Bataan Death March, and a Japanese prisoner of war camp, only to be bombed to the bottom of the ocean by his own forces when his captors violated the Geneva Convention and did not properly mark the ship that was transporting him and a thousand other unfortunate men to the Japanese mainland to serve as slave labor. If Dad held a grudge, he never mentioned it to me. Maybe he did, but he never talked about it or to anyone else in my presence. Mom, however, not long before she died, told me that was the reason Dad never watched war movies. Mom, by the way, loved war films, be they movies or documentaries, and was watching one the day she told me that. I always found her fascination with that genre of film a bit odd. If a war movie was on TV, she was watching. On those days in early December when the History Channel shows war films for twenty four hours straight, Mom watched from early to late until she fell asleep.

Dad, on the other hand, never watched any movie that I know of, much less a war one. There was something about his intellect, his attention span, his interest maybe that could not or would not deal with a movie. He watched a few TV shows and sports, mostly football. Before he died, he would call me and simply announce that a game was coming on at a certain time. He never asked me to come over, not overtly. He announced the game and hung up. Go figure.

I miss Mrs. N and I think of her often. I hope her end was a good one. I miss Dad. His end was sudden. I miss Mom. Her end was long and not so good, but she always made the best of whatever came her way.

People. They are all interesting. They are all different. They all have a story. Try to listen to one. You will rarely regret it.