With little money and a husband with the disposition of a cheetah in tight shoes, my former mother-in-law qualified for sainthood long before she met her Maker. Lillian Masters Massey came from, “Coon’s Creek”, the home farm of Charity and Sylvanus Masters. As a child, she walked the four miles to old Reunion School in Pickens County and rarely took more than an over the counter drug for a cold.
“Some people enjoy poor health and that’s why they stay sick. It’s the attitude ‘dahhlink’ (darling)–the attitude!” She loved to dabble in a German accent for fun.
She was nearing seventy when I married her middle child. My own mother died when I was a teenager. “Mama B.B.” and I were friends from the beginning.
My late husband and I surprised her with two grandchildren after her other four grands were “middlin’ sized.” My children followed her every step during our years on the home farm. What a faith walk it was! She planted by the almanac and lived by the Bible.
“He always says He’ll go before us, I have to believe that in order to make it every day. ‘Dahhlink’, just take what comes and know the good Lord is kickin’ in the doors ahead of you. If it’s locked, he’ll break open a window. You might have to wait awhile, but prayin’ and waitin’ go hand and hand anyway.”
Our walks through the countryside and talks on the telephone yielded sage advice. It still rings true today. Some of her morsels were:
• You have to make a wide swath around an ill man.
• Don’t brood; find a hobby or some service to God and your fellow man. Weave that life around your home and you’ll be happier.
• Take as little medicine as you can, doctors have an important place in the world, but God made the natural stuff, like herbs and roots. Don’t put all your faith in medicine; let God have the biggest dose of your faith.
• Go to church as often as you can. While in her seventies, the church van would pass her walking the mile from her home to church and offer her a ride. She would wave and say, “Thanks, but I’ll make it!”
• On one of our walks she commented, “I walked as a school girl so why should I stop now?” Her health theory was later validated–she died in her early nineties.
We’ll soon have a family gathering, one of those that makes everybody reminisce about folks who can’t be around. Her strength and that of her middle child will be there. There has to be a funny German guardian angel with a Pickens County dialect in heaven.
Mama B.B stays alive within our family through these memories that somehow have a heartbeat of their own—yes, the good Lord and family guardian angels have us covered.
“My ‘dahhlink’, you’re surrounded.”