My Glimpse of Eternity (2 page)

The next morning, John and I were at the breakfast table when Brenda bounced through the door. “I’m all ready. I did my own packing,” she announced proudly. She stood there with her long blonde curls, wide blue eyes and glowing pink cheeks. She was dressed in a blouse and ruffled panties, but no skirt. In her hand was a round pink plastic suitcase which she called her “suitbucket.”

It’s a good thing I decided to examine it. Out jumped her little black and white kitten “Pumpkin Face,” named for his round countenance and entrance into the world on Halloween. Also tucked inside were her swimsuit, sunglasses, a red Delicious apple and four pieces of bubble gum.

“What will you sleep in?” I smiled at the absence of any night clothes.

“In our motel, of course, Mommie.”

Dad and Mom and Gary arrived soon after breakfast. With careful planning we had decided that all six of us could fit fairly comfortably in our spacious Pontiac. Now came that frantic last-minute packing and closing up of the house. My dad put his car in our garage and began fitting luggage into the trunk of our convertible. Calm and unflappable at fifty, Dad’s outspoken wisdom and unselfish strength fed both his family and the congregation of 300 he pastored thirty-one miles to the south. Dad loved the outdoors, whether it was hunting, fishing, boating or gardening. His gear always included a Bible, a concordance, and clipboard for making sermon notes.

In contrast, my forty-six-year-old mother, Fern Burns Perkins, was a worrier. A descendant of poet Robert Burns, she had inherited some of his gift for verse, but took her homemaking role with total seriousness. Mother loved to bake and sew and keep an orderly house. During my school years I recall getting off the bus only twice when she wasn’t there to meet me. Once she was in labor at the hospital having my third brother, Marvin; the other time she couldn’t get home from shopping because a freight train was stuck for forty minutes at the crossing.

Her last son, Gary, taxed her patience to the limit. Adventuresome, with mischievous blue eyes, Gary had broken both arms in different escapades in the four-month period before our vacation trip. Once after a visit to the circus he tried unsuccessfully to tightrope-walk on the backyard clothes line. The other break came when he attempted an acrobatic flip over the round leather hassock in our living room. Arms now mended, he jumped out of the car, grabbed Brenda’s hand and raced her to our backyard swing, an automobile tire hanging on a rope from the limb of our sycamore tree.

John was on the phone with last-minute instructions to his shop when I realized we had made no arrangements to have our family collie and kitten fed while we were gone. “You and your animals, Betty,” was John’s only comment when he heard my dilemma. Dogs and kittens had been a long tradition in our family. My grandmother, whom everyone called Mom Burns, told me once that my mother had twenty-two assorted animals at one period when she was a child.

I had just finished working out a plan for a neighbor to feed our animals when Mother came in the house, an exasperated look in her eyes. “Gary and Brenda have gotten filthy on that swing,” she reported.

With one final flurry of energy on that warm June day in 1959, we closed and locked all the windows, turned off the water, left a note for the milkman, another note for the paperboy, said goodbye twice to the animals, brushed the dirt off Gary and Brenda, made three last-minute trips into the house to retrieve a jacket, a baseball glove and a piece of mosquito netting. I leaned back exhausted on the rear seat of the car as Dad drove out the driveway.

The adults may have been worn out, but the children certainly were not. Brenda, on my left, stood upon the floorboard behind the driver with her little arms wrapped around her grandfather’s neck, tight enough to choke him. “This is my Papaw,” she cried.

Uncle Gary, five weeks her junior, had been looking out the window on my right. Quickly he took exception. “This is no Papaw; this is my daddy,” he shouted, pulling her away. Sitting between the two contestants, I began to wonder how much vacation there would be for us.

For John and I greatly needed it. My husband had worked day and night for months to make a success of his business. The vacation would help relax his frayed nerves. As for me, I was in a deep rut and desperately wanted a change. I felt I had been a good mother, wife, Sunday School teacher, church organist, and neighbor. Working so hard to make a good impression on others had deeply drained me. What was wrong? Why did there seem to be so little real joy in all my strivings and achievements?

For a moment I was envious of my father, who received such deep satisfactions from his faith. How did he do it? He went about things so calmly, almost effortlessly. Just the way he was driving now, relaxed, serene, at peace with himself and others. When prodded about his serenity, Dad would smile and say that all peace and power come from Jesus. The answer seemed so pat.

We ate dinner somewhere near Chattanooga, Tennessee, and decided not to stop for the night until we were well into the state of Georgia. John was driving and I was sitting in front with him and Brenda, who soon fell asleep against my side. As the car grew quiet I continued my musing. John could find a new business opportunity in Florida. It was such a logical move for an outdoor family. Our plans to build a new home in Terre Haute could be adjusted to the Florida terrain. Even Mother and Dad might want to move down and join us.

Brenda, as she slept, seemed a bit heavy leaning against my right side. I shifted her slightly, but the discomfort in my side remained. I shook it off and closed my eyes to dream about our future in Florida.

2
Night Emergency

C
rystal Inn is located twenty miles north of Clearwater, Florida—an unspoiled, lovely cypress lodge on the rim of the Gulf of Mexico and part of the Gulf Vista Retreat Center. The six of us were the only guests, taking over all the upstairs rooms where we could see the waves roll in. Our view was unhindered except for one spot in the center—an aged banyan tree, gnarled, with heavy waxed foliage, writhing in and out of the earth.

Much of our first vacation day was spent on the sunporch resting and listening to the rustling sound of palm fronds in the breeze and the lapping of the waves on the shore. The sand was the texture and color of fine white bleached cake flour; the water was crystal-clear.

The high point of the day was to see Brenda’s face as she caught her first fish, just four and a half inches long, and pulled it out of the water. It was too small to eat, but she would not throw it back. She insisted she was going to take it to Indiana in the trunk of the car to show her other grandparents.

Gary had been entranced by the beach, too, especially the fiddler crabs. We spent an hour trying to teach him to float on his back in the water, but he had trouble relaxing. Irrepressible Gary never seemed to stop moving.

In many ways, my husband John and Gary were alike in their childlike approach to life. While my parents and I had been happy to relax on the sunporch and absorb the fragrances of Florida, John had been in and out of the water, up and down the beach on various investigative sorties, and then instigated a short trip to another island where we watched porpoises play and gathered up sand dollars along the shore.

One discordant episode occurred when John brought us the local afternoon newspaper. On the front page was a story about a young boy who had drowned nearby in the ocean. Mom sucked in her breath and vowed even closer supervision of Gary and Brenda. I found the story of this death a jarring and unpleasant note. It reminded me of my recent conversation with Dorothy Upchurch and her fears for John.

In the evening as the sun sank below the water, soft organ music began drifting out over the Gulf. It came from the steeple of an old church of Spanish structure, dull yellow stucco in color, nestled among tall stately palms at the end of Crystal Beach Avenue. Out on the water we could see fishermen in shrimp boats cut the motors of their boats to drift and listen. John was enjoying the music too, relaxed for the first time that day.

Amid the tranquility of the moment, my thoughts returned to the drowning we had read about that afternoon, and then to the only dead person I had ever seen—my tiny two-day-old baby brother.

“Mother, I’d like to ask you a question,” I said suddenly. “How did you feel when your baby boy died so soon after his birth?”

My mother looked surprised at the unexpected question. “I grieved to be sure,” she said softly, and we were silent for a while reliving that memory. The baby was a breech birth and his tiny spinal cord had snapped in the process. The private family service had been held in the beautiful chapel of a West Terre Haute funeral home. Age ten at the time, I sat next to Aunt Pearl in a lovely velvet chair, while my little brothers Don and Jim were with Mom Burns nearby. The tiny form lay in a small silvery blue casket banked with rosebuds and baby’s breath flowers.

There had been organ music, and the pastor had read from Scripture and spoken a few words. At the close of the service I walked past the open casket and vividly remember how pretty he was—dark brown wavy hair, round face with olive skin. I did not grieve. I had not known him and felt no particular need for him since I already had two little brothers that I loved dearly.

“Grief can get to be very self-centered,” Mother continued. “I soon realized that some day we would see our son in Heaven and that he would not have a severed spinal cord, but would be perfect and happy and so glad to see us. There would be a most joyful reunion.”

“You make death sound like a such a happy event,” I said, unconvinced.

“I believe that it is,” Mother said while Dad nodded vigorously.

My doubts were obvious and I did not pursue the subject. Death was the end of life as I knew it. How could that be good news? John, too, was uncomfortable. If anything, he loathed the subject of death more than I did.

I snuggled up to my husband and reached for his hand. John’s intensity had always attracted me. He had always reached out for life. It carried over into every area: work, play, love-making, and lately the church where he had begun energetically leading group-singing. In his early teens John and his two younger brothers had provided the main help for the family tomato farm in Middletown, Indiana. At fifteen John dreamed of owning a fancy car. By the time he had a driver’s license he had worked so hard and saved so much he was able to buy a used Cadillac convertible and thus became the envy of his schoolmates.

Then came a period of youthful wildness which brought him close to death on two occasions. Once while driving a gravel truck at work, he overturned it on a slope and he and the truck tumbled into sixty-five feet of water. The water pressure made it impossible to open either the door or roll down the window. Somehow with his last breath he broke the window and swam to the surface.

One night while driving home after a drinking party, several boys in the car with him dared John to try and beat a train to the railroad crossing. Forgetting the freezing road conditions, John gunned the engine, hit an icy spot—and the car skidded into the moving train. John was the only one badly hurt, suffering a broken leg and bad cuts on his head and cheek.

I first met him one Sunday shortly after this mishap. He was on crutches and had beamed a lopsided grin in my direction, looking a bit comical with his bandaged head. I learned later that he had refused to go out with his crowd the night before, stating, “I’m going to church in the morning. I hear the new minister has a pretty daughter.” They had just hooted at him.

That Sunday morning, he really did look as if he had been hit by a train. I saw a battered youth one inch smaller than me and was not a bit impressed, because I was looking for a tall sophisticated young man with polished charm and spiritual depth.

How grossly I underestimated John’s drive and determination! He went home that Sunday and told his mother and dad that he was going to marry the preacher’s daughter. John then left his wild crowd, entered into church activities and became a warmhearted, loving, and unselfish person, winning my heart in the process. We were married two years later at Thanksgiving.

John had been working in the heat treat department of a New Castle, Indiana, automobile assembly plant. His job was to take 90-pound axles and stick them into a blast furnace for tempering—a physically demanding task. Soon after our marriage, I persuaded him to move to Terre Haute where John became manager of the Sunoco service station at the corner of Ft. Harrison Road and Lafayette Avenue. Johnny’s Sunoco Corner soon expanded to eight pumps, a car wash, a tire and battery business, and then a used car lot. Always the materialistic dreamer, I foresaw a series of service stations for John, who would then move into an executive role.

Despite his drive John had an impractical side, such as his disconcerting habit of giving credit to poor risks. Poverty-stricken travelers from the south (Kentucky hillbillies) coming north on Highway 41 to Chicago looking for work would stop and were soon telling John their hard-luck stories. My husband would often refuse to take their money, insisting they pay him by mail when they found work. Sometimes they sent the money, sometimes not. I recall one bearded little man who sent us a dollar a week for almost a year to pay for a set of tires.

There were times when John’s generous nature made me want to hug him—such as when he would take out his own handkerchief to wipe a child’s runny nose, or gently steer a youngster into the washroom, or give a free soda to some tired and impoverished traveler. Then there were occasions when his tenderheartedness made me want to throw a bucket of water on him, like that hectic day before Christmas one year when he arrived home in the middle of the day with a carful of children. I was supposed to babysit while their weary parents went shopping for presents.

My biggest problem after our marriage had been with his mother. I sensed Mother Upchurch’s disapproval of me from the start and was always on the defensive. John was mostly unaware of the tension that grew between the two women he loved the most. Like his father, Oscar Upchurch, he was easygoing and avoided family confrontations. This came out especially over the issue of which church we should attend.

John had always gone to his family church where the service was dignified and carefully structured. In my denomination there was more freedom of worship and lively singing, sometimes with guitars. After our marriage John became paralyzed with indecision, not wanting to displease either his mother or me. Although a bit disdainful of other churches, I would have gone to his if he had asked me, but for seven months he would not go to church at all. Then one Sunday morning, without a word, he dressed in his best suit and accompanied me to our church. Later he joined.

My resentment of my mother-in-law often came out in the “pity parties” which the wives of her two other sons occasionally held with me when our husbands were at work. I think deep down we both respected and feared her, but it certainly was not easy to love Mother Upchurch.

Somewhat guiltily I reflected on the way I had distorted the story of John’s and my honeymoon trip. Since John could not afford to take me on a honeymoon when we were married, his mother and sister Helen volunteered to accompany us to Niagara Falls. Mrs. Upchurch agreed to pay all the expenses, but I never told that part of the story, nor that John and I drove alone to Niagara Falls while his mother and sister stayed for a visit with a relative in Port Allegheny, Pennsylvania. I had always put the emphasis on the meddlesome mother-in-law angle and cast Mother Upchurch in the role of the heavy as I told how she accompanied us on our honeymoon.

Uneasily I recalled how during her last visit only a few days before Dorothy Upchurch had sensed my restlessness and chided me about it in her incisive manner.

“You must learn to be satisfied with what you have, young lady. It’s there in the Bible. Philippians 4:11.
I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content.
And for you and me that should mean the state of Indiana too,” she concluded with surety.

I had stared at her in dismay, wondering how she had so accurately understood my state of mind. And her quote from Philippians was on target. The material things in life often pulled me away from spiritual matters, but for some reason Scripture always spoke to me—and had from the time of my conversion at age thirteen.

Still tired from the long trip from Indiana and groggy from the hot sun, we all returned early. John was instantly asleep while I lay in bed fighting a nagging pain in my side that had begun after dinner. I eased out of bed and went out on the screened balcony, watching the beacon on the lighthouse at the tip of a nearby island. The pain in my side throbbed with each blink. Finally, I went back inside, awoke John and told him I needed a doctor. He was instantly alarmed and roused my parents. Dad and John quickly helped me to the car, leaving Mother with the sleeping children. We decided to head for the small beach hospital at Tarpon Springs, nine miles away, which we had passed on the highway.

As we drove out of Crystal Beach the waving fronds on the Robolina and Saga date palms had lost their lustre. The gnarled old banyan tree reminded me of a stooped old witch. For I was writhing with so much nausea that I wondered when I would have to ask my dad to stop and let me be sick by the side of the road. In a matter of minutes we pulled up in front of the hospital.

The Tarpon Springs Hospital seemed smaller even than the veterinarian clinic at home. A male attendant quickly approached the car door with a wheelchair. I stepped out and was about to reject it when a wave of weakness made me sink into it gratefully.

Inside, the attendant steered me to the emergency room and helped me onto the examining table. I clenched my fists, determined to be stoical, remembering the many times in my childhood when my anemic and usually pregnant mother would be stretched out on the couch in a faint. It always seemed to happen with many members of the family present, and assorted grandmothers and aunts would bend over her with cold cloths for her forehead and rub her wrists to stimulate circulation. Mixed with my love and concern was the suspicion that she somehow enjoyed her misery. As I grew older I was determined never to show this kind of weakness.