This old story is posted here in response to Alkelda the Gleeful's suggestion that stories are more important than the physical objects that remind us of them. Maybe I will even figure out how to take a picture to illustrate the story.

Think of Me

Life in the southern coalfields of West Virginia was very hard. I was lonely, living at the head of a “holler,” with a small child for whom I had to care without benefit of nearby friends, family, or even neighbors, and without the comforts of hot running water, indoor bathrooms, or central heating. My marriage was not happy. Every day I cried.

My parents were faithful visitors several times a year, and it was my father who helped me cope with the winter cold in a practical way. He fashioned a door into the concrete block pump house so that I could still haul water when the pipes froze. He screened in the back porch and then put up plastic to cut the cold winds that would whip down the mountain side. But he couldn’t change the hideously mis-named “Warm Morning” coal stove that spewed forth its tarry smoke until settling down to warm the little house from the living room, blasting out heat at first but then through the night, dying down to pitiful little embers by the cold, very cold, morning.

Mom, on the other hand, told me horror stories of her own early days of marriage and motherhood. I remember how she waited for Dad to get home from the little country school he taught in rural Nebraska when my brother Jim was an infant. She too was cold, and the coal stove was burning low. But when Dad got home, he had a sprained ankle. She still had to struggle out to the coal shed to fetch coal for the stove. At least Dad was there to watch the baby. And, I thought wistfully, at least she was glad that he was home. I think that was the Nebraska winter when there were 40 straight days without the temperature rising above 0 degrees Fahrenheit. That sounded so Biblical, and so depressing!

The stories of my parents’ suffering didn’t really alleviate my current travail. Nor did meditations on the unimaginable hardships of women and children in 3rd world countries make my own troubles seem small. Rather, they all seemed to join together into a dumb, hopeless morass of anguish at the lot of so many on this poor Earth, whatever the time period, wherever the location. On those cold, cold mornings, when the “Warm Morning” glumly sulked and I stayed curled up with my baby in under three massive comforters, I would chant litanies of prayer for all the suffering of the world, but I rarely felt blessed in comparison.

Other than visits from my parents, my sister, or from close friends, my primary comforts were music, reading, and (in warmer weather) the Great Outdoors. And it was in reading that I discovered in the theological thrillers of Charles Williams, the Doctrine of Substituted Love. This was to become an unusual source of strength to me. In the book Descent Into Hell Williams suggests that one person might literally bear another’s burdens (as the Apostle Paul exhorts) and that this act might not be beholden to time or place. In this book, for instance, a descendant of a person put to death for his faith by fire and torture actually takes on much of the suffering of her forebearer out of compassion, and that willingness to do so not only alleviated his suffering centuries before, but her suffering was less than his would have been because it had been taken on willingly and upon another’s behalf.

This Doctrine of Substituted Love really captured my imagination. Maybe the suffering that I felt each day could actually be joined to someone else’s suffering and made meaningful. As it was, I was heartily bored with my own suffering which seemed to have no purpose. It was just there, always and always, and I was tired of my own tears.

The opportunity for Substituted Love which thrust itself to me upon me was the story of my Great-grandmother Maggie. My mother’s mother, Grandma Viola Cooprider, was the oldest child of Grandma Maggie. In the later part of the 1800's, my Grandma Maggie and Grandpa Reuben, along with a number of other family members, had travelled to Kansas by covered wagon and had settled there. On day, when my own Grandma Viola was 6 , Grandpa Reuben and another member of the family (my Mom would know who though I have forgotten) went into town, McPherson, to purchase supplies. They tied up the horses for the day at an establishment where there was reported illness, though “only measles” was the reassurance. The measles sadly turned out to be the dreaded smallpox.

All of the family contracted smallpox, and Grandma Maggie, though sick herself, nursed them all. Neighbors, of course, made a big detour around the farmhouse, afraid of contracting the disease themselves. What seems unimaginable to me, both then and now, was that Grandma Maggie not only nursed her husband, Viola, and Celesta (age 4), but also a 2-year old little boy who died. Grandma Maggie gave birth during this terrible period to another little boy who also dies, so she was faced with the heartbreaking task of burying two babies while sick herself and in the aftermath of having given birth. She must have been able to go on only because of having the two little girls to care for. But years later, all she would allow herself was the wistfulness of having lost the smoothness of her beautiful skin. The other must have been too difficult to touch upon.

Every day after taking the vow to take on some of Grandma Maggie’s suffering, I prayed for her, though this was close to a century later. Could prayer work retroactively through time? It was a matter for faith. The prayers had helped me, but I earnestly hoped that they had helped Grandma Maggie as well. I would never really know.

Years later, after my Aunt Eva died - Eva, who was the caretaker and dispenser of many of the artifacts and memorabilia of the family - I was given several boxes of linens and china that had been earmarked for me. All of the nieces and nephews were given their carefully thought-out portions.

Amongst the newspaper-wrapped treasures that I carefully examined, I came upon a solitary, ruby-colored glass cup, which I later realized came from the Civil War era.. Inside was a paper in my Aunt Eva’s hand. “This is for Jill. It belonged to Maggie and was given to her by her father when she was a young girl.” Etched on the side of the cup was my answer.... “Think of Me.”