EXCERPTS FROM A FINAL TRIBUTE
“These be three silent things: the freshly fallen snow, the hour before the dawn, the mouth of one just dead.” I no longer recall the author, and I think the quote is likely only partially correct. And although the voice of a departed loved one is silenced in a strictly physical sense, I know from past experience that the influence of a shared life continues long after physical death. This has been of even more significance to me, likely because of its immediate relevance, than the rebirths anticipated by many religions, including, of course, the Christian faith that Gladys embraced. Next summer she will be reunited with her only child, a daughter, “dust to dust, and ashes to ashes,” in a spot known only to a few and of significance principally to me. This second pilgrimage will mark the fiftieth anniversary, to the very day, of her daughter’s leaving home to begin a thirty-year marriage. Her departure ends more than half a century of a mother-in-law son-in-law relationship that I have to believe was unusual, perhaps even extraordinary, largely due to her unlimited patience and love. I can think of only seven persons still living whom I’ve known longer. I’ll miss her perspective, her wisdom, her grace, and her poise. And yet her presence will still be with me, because by now I pretty much know how she would answer any question and what solutions she would suggest for any problem. I can still dream that I hear her perky “Hi there” when she recognized my voice on the phone, and I can still visualize the sparkle in her essentially unseeing eyes when I entered the room and kissed her. But I will miss her as I still do her daughter. Despite the grief her death brings, I’m grateful for the quickness and peacefulness with which it came, apparently in the form of two briefly separated strokes. Her final portrait was made just a few days before Thanksgiving, 2002, and she died the morning of December 5. Farewell, my dear old friend; it is my good fortune to have known you.
W. Vance Johnson 05 Dec 02