FireQuill Publications
The
Short Stories, Plays and Bible Studies of Kathy Kearney
The
Short Stories, Plays and Bible Studies of Kathy Kearney
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Love's Fierce Grip
Love’s Fierce Grip
BY: Kathy Kearney (c) 1992
Dale never married. Although, I did hear my mother make reference to a woman that Dale had been courting for about 5 years or so. "But I don't imagine they'll marry until Blaine dies," she would say, shaking her head. "Dale would never leave his father, and no woman would come and live in that house."
Blaine and Dale lived freely, two messy bachelors in a kind of beneficent squalor. Although a two-story house, all living was conducted from the downstairs. A pot-bellied coal stove provided heat, and an old-fashioned wood burning stove was for cooking--but only the top was used. Seems an old mama cat had adopted the oven for a birthing chamber, and after nearly roasting a few of her offspring, Blaine had taken off the oven door. The corners behind the stove had two cots, always unmade. Various pieces of odds and ends littered the walls on nails, or inhabited dusty corners, boots, coats and gloves were draped over most all the kitchen furniture except two rickety chairs at the rusted, metal-topped table.
Blaine was a master carver. "You bring the biggest peach pit you can find, Kathy," He once told me," and I'll carve you a pretty basket." I still have it today. Another time he carved a little book for me, no bigger than the tip of my thumb.
All the valley families loved Blaine and Dale. Blaine was a wealth of agricultural and livestock wisdom, although his own farm seemed so run down and poor.
It wasn't until I married and had children of my own, that I asked my mother about Blaine's life. Was their house always that dirty and ramshackled? Blaine must have been married at one time. What about his wife?
No, she told me. Blaine wasn't always messy, and his farm at one time had been the most prosperous in the valley. And, yes, he had been married to a small, delicate woman, named Emma. They loved each other devotedly, and Emma kept the house neat and clean. But that was before she got sick.
Mother told me about that long hot summer, and how it took every day of it for Emma to die. In those days you didn't go into to a hospital. So it fell to Blaine to take care of the farm, see that Dale got to school, and nurse Emma through her last wasting days.
"Even though it was murderously hot," mother recounted," Emma could never get warm. So very evening after Blaine finished the chores, washed up and fixed dinner for Dale, he would come upstairs, wrap Emma in a big blanket and sit with her in the rocking chair by the window. He would hold her for hours.
It was here that mother blinked a lot and cleared her throat before continuing. "Emma said that the only time she felt warm was while Blaine held her in his arms. I am not sure, but I like to think that he was holding her when she breathed her last."
It was a bit before she could continue, "I guess during that summer that Blaine had poured so much of himself into Emma that when she died, there was nothing left for anyone or anything else. The farm ran down, he closed Emma's and his room, and He and Dale lived in the kitchen."
When I was 10, Blaine and Dale went camping with several of us farm families. The men picked a campsite deep in the woods by a creek where an old suspension bridge spanned its rocky bottom. Blaine knew the area well, having hunted and fished there since his youth. He always said that when he died he hoped it would be there among the leafy paradise of that wooded glen.
My brother and I spent the day ouching our way over sharp stones as we hunted tiny river crabs. After a dinner of campfire fried chicken, hot coal baked potatoes, homemade bread, and apple pie, we were only too happy to crawl into our sleeping bags. The gentle murmur of adult voices wafted over us while slumber laid a siege against our heavy eyes. We lay there, our eyelids matching flicker for flicker the campfire's dying flames, fighting sleep’s onslaught so as not to not miss a word of conversation. Then out of the darkness as the adults began to settle in for the night, I heard Blaine's voice, " I'll be asleep before any of you."
I remember the sudden silence that seemed to fill up the whole forest. Then one of the men said to my dad, "John, I think Blaine's gone."
Blaine’s wish was granted, on that sweet fragrant night, Blaine slipped away from our lives, away from my childhood, but never from my memory.
I often think of Blaine sitting in that rocking chair, holding his beloved Emma, willing death away. I think of him directing the power of his determined love to pour his life and warmth into that frail body for one more day. But human love cannot stand against death's unyielding siege.
The old hymn’s words come to mind. "Oh love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee. I give Thee back the life I owe that in Thy ocean depths it can richer, fuller be."
Funny how life’s incidents can point us to the greater truths of God. When life gets scary, painful, tiring, there is One who holds us in His arms, holding all else at bay that would mar His will for us, commanding His power be poured into us, not for just one more day, but forever. Unlike Blaine’s love, though fierce and deep as it fought sickness and death, God’s love is perfect in its fierceness and depth, holding back all that would harm.
"Oh, love that will not let you go, rest your weary soul in Him.” He has conquered all manner of death--the death of dreams, the death of loved ones, of hope, of human promises. When the coldness of life sucks warmth from your frail self, there is One who will hold you, rock you, wrap you in His love and bring you gently home.
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