Last week was packed with reunions and good-byes. In fact, I’m still recovering from the wonderful Nebraska visit with old friends and the passing of Abby the dog’s. But from all indications, the spate of hellos and farewells isn’t over yet.
This weekend, news arrived of the death of Aunt Letha. One of my mother’s older sisters, she’d been in declining health ever since Marvin, her husband, passed away a year ago. The decline intensified a few months ago, and the updates her kids sent now and then prepared us for the inevitable.
Thoughts of Letha have been my companion since the news arrived.
I see her in the tiny farm kitchen, whipping up the most amazing meals for her husband, seven kids, and her assorted nieces and nephews visiting for a holiday weekend or a week in the summer. I see her processing the eggs we gathered, preparing bottles for us to feed to the orphan lambs, and running fresh milk through the cream separator.
This woman knew how to work.
When Aunt Letha needed a break, she sat at her sewing machine and turned out shirts and pants for her sons, dresses, skirts, and blouses for her daughters, and if memory serves me right, even the occasional swimsuit. When she ran out of clothes to make for her kids, she moved on to the visiting nieces and nephews, even making new underwear for those of us who hadn’t packed undies to last a week.
I am not kidding.
Letha was the most accomplished seamstress among her sister siblings. That’s saying something, because all five “Hess girls” were pretty good with needle and thread. But Aunt Letha outsewed them all. She was no slouch with a crochet hook, either. In her older years, her hands were constantly busy making afghans, first for grandchildren and then for great-grandchildren.
18 of the former, and 16 1/2 of the latter at last count.
So this picture is a fitting remembrance. It was taken a few years back at the Jasper, Minnesota apartment where she and Marvin lived, a few miles from their old farm. She was in her early 80’s then, still busy crocheting and sewing as the skein of yarn on the chair beside her and the spools of thread on the end table bear witness.
She was working on an afghan for a new great-grandchild, she said.
This is the Letha we will remember Wednesday when family gathers to celebrate her long life. Her still hands will be proof that her busy, talented spirit no longer inhabits her body. But the crowd of her descendants – children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren buzzing busily about – will bear testimony of her powerful, productive life. And every child, niece, and nephew who ever sported her custom made foundation garments will be wondering the same thing: could she be sewing underwear in heaven right now?
Nah.
