The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life (25 page)

“Ruthie,” she spoke into her ear, “I’m going to keep my promise. I’m going to help Mike and the girls. I’m going to keep my promise.” Then she sat down next to the man her daughter loved above all others, and they grieved together.

When Laura and Abby drove with the Leming girls into the hospital parking lot, Tim was outside waiting to receive them. Tim understood that Mike, still grieving at Ruthie’s side, was in no state to break the news to his children, so he appointed himself to stand in.

The Suburban came to an abrupt stop next to where Tim stood, trying to summon the courage to speak the awful truth on the worst day of these children’s lives. Claire and Rebekah climbed out of the Suburban. Tim took a knee. Claire stood in front of him. Bekah stood by Laura.

“Where’s Mama?” Claire asked.

“I’m so, so sorry, my sweet girls,” said Tim. “Mama has died.”

The girls were in shock. They had not imagined, they could not have imagined, that this was coming. Ruthie had protected them from
the thought, reckoning there would be time to make them ready. Bekah wept in Laura’s arms. Claire collapsed into Abby.

“What am I going to do without a mama?” Claire said. “I can’t be without a mama.”

“I know,” said Tim.

“Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy?
Where’s Daddy?!
” Claire asked. Tim, Laura, and Abby led them down the gauntlet of sobbing friends and family, into the hospital room where their father abided with what remained of their mother.

Claire and Bekah wanted to embrace their mother’s body, but they were frightened.
Is this really Mama?
Claire thought. Ruthie’s face was visible, and a blanket covered her body. Their father, consumed by grief and fear, could not comfort them. All he could say was, “I’m alone. My baby’s gone.” Claire was scared. She had never seen her daddy like this. Her big, strong daddy looked small, weak, lost, and frightened. The world was turned upside down.

The sisters took in the full vision of their mother, her face pale, cold, dead on a hospital bed. Turning from it they threw themselves into their father’s arms. “I’m going to be so alone,” he cried. Rebekah turned away from her father, then stood at the foot of Ruthie’s bed, saying, “Wake up, Mama. Wake up! Mama, don’t go, please don’t go.”

As Paw began the three-hour drive home, he tried to call me in Philadelphia, but couldn’t get through. Julie was at the weekly homeschooling co-op class with the kids when he reached her by phone.

“Ruthie’s not doing well at all, and I can’t get Rod,” he said. She could tell from the tone in his voice that he was scared.

“Don’t you worry about it. I’ll get him,” Julie said. “I love you.”

At our apartment in Philadelphia I heard the text alert ding on my iPhone as I walked into the living room from the shower. It was from my wife.

“CALL ME STAT!” it read.

Seconds later Julie was on the phone. “Something’s really wrong with Ruthie. You need to call your dad right this second. He’s on his cell phone.”

I hung up, then punched in Paw’s number.

Paw’s voice sounded dry and fragile. “Son,” he said, “your sister is dead.”

I told him I would catch the next plane home.

Julie was still at the co-op classes with the kids when I phoned her with the news. She said they would be right home. I took my icon of Christ from the mantel, knelt with it on the floor, and prayed for the peace of Ruthie’s soul. I prayed for strength for our mother and father, suffering this morning what no parent should have to endure. I prayed the same for Mike and his children, and for their friends. So many mornings and so many evenings, I had prayed against this day. But also, from the time I lay in Ruthie’s bed after her diagnosis and felt a divine presence tell me that she would not survive, but that all would be well, I prayed for the grace to accept the will of God. Once again I asked God for that grace. Then I booked a flight and packed a bag.

Julie and the children came home, wrecked. Lucas was especially bereft. “Y’all come down when you can,” I said, then told them good-bye, and caught a train for the airport.

When the train rolled into Thirtieth Street Station in downtown Philly, I reached Tim by phone. He said Ruthie had passed quickly, that everyone was hard hit, but all was well. I knew all couldn’t be well on this most terrible of mornings. But I also knew that wall of love surrounding my family in this crisis was rock solid, and would not be breached.

As the plane took off I stared out the window at the receding city of Philadelphia, fingering the knots on my prayer rope, quietly reciting, “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

For the first time in all my life I was going home and Ruthie would not be there. Ruthie, the anchor, the fastness, the tower and the ark that
would carry our West Feliciana family into another generation. Long ago I accepted that I would never settle there, and I always felt ever more free to roam the world over, knowing that Ruthie would always be present on the ridge in Starhill. I would often think about the years to come, when both of us, grown gray-haired and plump, would gather for Thanksgiving with our children and grandchildren, playing where we had played, thinking as children do that it will all last forever. Ruthie, the matriarch and successor, the sustainer of the fields and the pond and the trees and the hollows of our father’s land, the upholder of tradition and the guarantor that, however far away I or my children or my children’s children strayed, they would always have a refuge in the Felicianas. Where Ruthie was, there was our home.

Not anymore.
She is gone, she is gone,
I thought.
What will become of us now? What is required of me? Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

At West Feliciana Middle School Principal Ben Necaise called the eighth-grade teachers together in Rae Lynne Thomas’s classroom. He shut the door, looked at them all, and said in a calm, measured voice, “I just want to let y’all know Ruthie passed. Take as much time as you need to do what you have to do. We’ll cover your classes for you.” Ruthie’s devastated friends and colleagues gathered their things and headed south to the hospital. Ben Necaise was true to his word; the school staff had the teachers’ backs, freeing Ruthie’s friends to be present for each other, and for Ruthie’s family.

Ronnie Morgan thought it was a mercy that neither Paw nor Mam were at home in Starhill that morning and compelled to see what they could never unsee. It didn’t feel that way to Paw, though, as he endured a three-hour car ride to his dead daughter’s bedside. Hershel, who drove, had lost his adult daughter several years earlier, in a car accident.

“Chief, you know what it’s like,” Paw said. “You lost your daughter.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Hershel.

He understood what Paw was going through. He also knew that a man sometimes just needs to be alone with his thoughts. Some hurt is beyond the reach of words. They drove on in silence.

Paw and Hershel crossed the river at Vidalia and headed south through Mississippi on Highway 61. Meanwhile Hannah was at LSU sitting in biology class with her mobile phone turned off. When class ended she started walking toward her French class and checked her messages on the way. She knew something was wrong when she saw so many calls stacked up in her voicemail. And there was a text from her father: “Mom’s not good, come home.”

She panicked. She called Michael Steele, an LSU friend from St. Francisville, and asked him to drive her home because something terrible had happened to her mother. Michael ran at once to Hannah’s dorm, took her keys, loaded her into her Jeep, turned on the emergency flashers, and raced out of town.

Hannah was hysterical, screaming and sobbing.

“Hannah, calm down!” Michael said. “I can’t drive if you’re like this.” He told her to lay the seat back and get hold of herself. Hannah’s mind reeled. She thought about how much she wanted to tell Mama that she loved her. How sorry she was to have been so ungrateful. How much she had always wanted to be able to love others as unselfishly as she did. Would she have the chance to say these things to her mother now? She hoped so.
Please God, just let me tell her.

In the haste to get to the hospital Michael pushed Hannah’s rattletrap Jeep so hard that its radiator blew halfway to St. Francisville. He piloted the Jeep to the shoulder, steam billowing from under its hood. At that very moment a middle-aged couple pulled over behind them in a pickup truck. They opened Hannah’s passenger door and saw her lying prone and tearful.

“Are you sick? Are you sick? Where are you going?”

“To the hospital. My mom is dying.”

“Come on, we’ll take you.”

Hannah and Michael climbed into the backseat of the truck. The man and the woman asked them if they were Christians. Yes, they said. The couple prayed for Hannah’s mother as she rocked back and forth, crying and trying to calm herself for the scene at the hospital.

In the room with Ruthie’s body Laura continued to keep watch over Claire and Rebekah. Claire couldn’t stop crying. At one point she looked at Laura and asked, “Can I go get a sip of water?”

“Yeah, baby, come on,” said Laura.

“I mean, is it okay for me to leave?”

That was Claire,
thought Laura. Claire would never leave her mama. When Ruthie was so sick, and Mike would be working Saturday nights at the fire station, Claire turned down invitations to do fun things with friends. She chose instead to stay home with Mama and watch movies, or play games. Anything to keep Mama from feeling alone. Even now, in death, Claire was faithful.

“Miss Laura, this was such a normal day,” Claire said. “Mama had my lunch box ready. She kissed me ten times on my hand. I walked out the door and she said, ‘I can’t wait to see you when you get home.’ It was a normal day. She told me good luck on my test, and I left.”

Panic crossed Claire’s face.

“My note! Where is my lunch box? Every day she writes me a note and puts it in my lunch box. Omigod, omigod, I’ve got to go out to the car and get my lunch box!”

Claire and Laura ran down the hall, out the hospital door, and to the Suburban. Claire yanked open the passenger door, grabbed her lunch box, and opened it. There, on yellow Post-it paper, were her mother’s final words to her:

Good luck on a super day of learning.

I can’t wait until you get home so I can have a hug.

Love, Mom.

Claire wept. “She’s not going to be there to hug me. I can’t hug her again.”

“Claire, listen to me,” said Laura. “That just shows you that at seven thirty this morning, when your mama sent you out the door, she didn’t know she was going to leave you. The first thing your mama said to y’all when she told you she had cancer was ‘We’re not going to be angry at God.’ Baby, I don’t believe you can be angry with God about this. You can’t. The one thing that she is free of is her sickness and her cancer. The hardest thing for her to do in this world was to leave y’all. She would never choose to do that.”

When Rebekah saw Claire had her note from Mama, she remembered that she had left her lunch box at school. Laura drove out to Bains Elementary, three miles north of town, fetched Bekah’s lunch box, and delivered it to her in the hospital room. Ruthie’s final words to Rebekah were:

Have a special day! Hugs and kisses. Love, Mom.

The Good Samaritans from the highway delivered Hannah and Michael to the hospital, and quietly drove away. Tim, Abby, and other friends and family stood at the front door to intercept her. As Hannah barreled toward the door, Abby grabbed her.

“I’ve got to get to my mom now!” Hannah shrieked.

“Hannah, your mom died,” said Abby.

Hannah drew back. She banged her head and her fists into the pebble-studded hospital wall, then kicked a trash can. She wouldn’t let anybody touch her. Hannah threw herself onto the ground and wailed.
When Kay Graves reached her, Hannah was sitting on the ground, her back against the hospital facade, refusing to go in.

“I can’t do it!” she said. “I can’t go in there!”

“Hannah,” Kay said sternly, “You have to get it together. You are a grown woman now. You are the oldest sister. Your family needs you. Now you stand up, and pull it together, and go in there to your family.”

Tim and Kay helped Hannah to her feet. Kay took one of Hannah’s hands, and Abby took the other. They led her down the hall, past all her mother’s friends. Mam met them by the nurses’ station. Hannah screamed and threw herself into Mam’s arms. Outside the door to the room stood Mike, sobbing so hard he could barely catch his breath. They embraced wordlessly. And then Hannah went in to be at her mother’s side.

Mam met Paw in the hospital parking lot and together they went in to view for the first time together the body of their daughter. Abby sat with them, thinking that Mam and Paw were much stronger than she expected them to be. Mike and the girls, though—that sight, Abby felt, would break your heart. Mike was so shattered that when the eye bank called to confirm that Ruthie’s wishes were to donate her eyes, Abby had to handle the arrangements.