We first knew May after her beloved Wilbur was gone. She came from the less hurried times of the South. She didn’t seem very complicated. She was a straightforward lady with snowy hair and a strong Swedish background. She drove a pale blue Mercury Marquis that Wilbur bought before he died and would wheel into the church parking lot from her home every Sunday morning.
Each child called her “Miss May” and she would take them around to the nursery during the sermon to the room painted like Noah’s Ark. May loved children. She knew children are a special gift from God.
After church, she’d go back out and wheel down 59 South to the cemetery to talk to Wilbur. Guess she told him how things were maybe not as nice as when they were a young couple together. And I guess they weren’t. But she wouldn’t give up.
She was first to a Wednesday Potluck and muttered about young folks putting less than natural ingredients into their foods. At her last Sister’s in Christ Banquet, she was first one sitting at my Patriotic table. She took the red, white and blue star necklaces from the trim and put them around her neck. May loved America. Wilbur had been a POW in the Air Force in WWII. He came home to work for the Post Office and paint pretty scenes she displayed around her home.
She tended the flowers on her big corner lot until it was almost too much to do that. The children from church would go out and help clean up the yard in the spring. They all loved Miss May.
Long before Christmas, she baked the old Swedish recipe for shortbread cookies and froze them for Christmas dinner at Angel of Joy. Hers were not rough looking like the English recipe I make. No, no, May rolled them thin, and cut them perfectly with little ridges round the edges. She froze them and kept them till it was time to bring them to church. They were light, and fluffy and their taste made you smile!
She spoke her mind about all manner of things that perhaps she really did not understand. But she knew two things and knew them well: America and God. She believed.
May wanted independence – after all that’s what America is about. She stayed in her home, she drove her car, she did her own thing.
Sometimes we saw her at the Mall where she’d sit watching time go by. Younger women would invite her to home parties, lunch and even to the Tea Room. The peach tea was not quite natural enough at the Tea Room, but she sure loved the International House of Pancakes, even when she went by herself.
She kept us “younger” ones in line, probably just because she thought of us as younger. She didn’t like me driving the long way around because I don’t like the loop. But she did want cream for her wrinkles, at the last home beauty party we had.
As she became less sturdy on her feet, she liked to sit by the most handsome man who would escort her up to communion. She had her ways to get her way, that May!
She became more frail and some Sundays, she fainted, right during the sermon. (On questioning, she divulged she never ate breakfast before coming.)
More than once we called 911 and more than once someone drove Miss May’s car back to her home.
And more than once, the Pastors rode out the storm with her in the hospital. It was mostly heart-related. Did you take your pill, Miss May?
One time, they found her on the floor at the house, and I think she was there for more than a day. Independent Miss May!
Eventually they convinced her that it was time to move on. Her house was sold and she went to an apartment in a nice enough complex. But she didn’t take a bed, you know – just a recliner – because that was really just one room and she wanted no bed in there!
One Sunday morning, as she prepared for church, she fell and broke her hip. So, when they went to pick her up, she was lying in an ambulance, not standing by the door for her ride.
The ladies of the old neighborhood and ladies from church would look in on her but she really couldn’t go anywhere now, because she could not longer walk. She had just never healed. Somehow her other hip got broken. Now she was totally reliant on others and my, did Miss May hate that!
We’d take her favorite flowers and even sing her favorite hymn. She’d smile sweetly and pretend she remembered just who we were.
She drifted up to Heaven the other night and Miss May became one of the Children of the Heavenly Father.
Good Night, Miss May . . .
