Though None Go with Me

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  He exhaled and was gone.

  The evening before the funeral, Elisabeth spent more than an hour with Pastor Clarkson. He seemed deeply impressed with her account of Will’s life and their love story. They planned a simple ceremony for one o’clock: a welcome, an obituary, Ben’s solo, Pastor’s message, and the burial.

  “Would you like a viewing in advance of the service?” Pastor said.

  She shook her head. “I put myself in his place. I would not want people to see me that way.” She chose to place atop the casket his Fairbanks-Morse executive photograph from just before he was hospitalized.

  The next day was unseasonably warm. Elisabeth put on a thin raincoat and waited outside her front door. She was moved by the offer of Frances Childs that she and Art swing by and drive her the few blocks to Christ Church.

  “We’ll sit with you, if you’d like,” Frances said. But Elisabeth declined. Benjy was not cleared to attend and Betty was under the weather in New Mexico, so Elisabeth had decided to sit alone with her thoughts in the first pew. Had she known how nice it would be outside, she’d have declined the ride as well.

  Art and Frances were clearly uncomfortable, he clamming up and she jabbering. Elisabeth felt no need to humor her. She hoped one day she and Frances would again become the friends they had once been, ones who told each other everything.

  Will’s closed coffin stood beneath the pulpit, and the mourners shuffled past, smiling at the picture, some softly touching it, most pausing to greet Elisabeth.

  She had felt so alone for so long in her vigil over Will that she was amazed at how many people filed by. The little sanctuary quickly filled with people from Snyder’s Pharmacy, Fairbanks-Morse, the State Hospital (including staff and even family of other long-term patients), Three Rivers Hospital, the church, and the neighborhood. Elisabeth was grateful that Ben and Dellarae just silently shook her hand. A sinking feeling reminded her that she had lost both the men in her life yet again.

  The seven junior girls from Elisabeth’s Sunday school class were the last to be herded past. Their substitute teacher led the way with a stern look and a finger to her lips, obviously having scared the girls into silence. Elisabeth found herself suddenly animated, thrilled to see them. She greeted each by name and thanked them for coming. The last handed her a thick, business-size envelope with “Mrs. Bishop” hand-printed on it.

  “It’s from all of us,” towheaded Irene whispered. Her teacher shushed her, but Elisabeth winked and thanked her.

  Elisabeth quietly worked open the envelope. Inside was an oversized sheet of lined writing paper that Elisabeth couldn’t unfold all the way without making it visible to everyone. From what she could decipher, each girl had written a brief paragraph and signed her name.

  One had written, “Mrs. Bishop, I’m sorry your husband died, even if he was in the State Hospital. From you I learned to pray and forgive people.”

  Elisabeth couldn’t wait to get to the rest of them, but she quickly put the sheet away when Joyce was ushered in next to her, carrying a sleeping Lisa. “Oh!” Elisabeth said, and the tears came. “I thought you weren’t—”

  “I know,” Joyce said. “I just thought she ought to be at her grandfather’s funeral.”

  “I’m so grateful,” Elisabeth said. Lisa awoke when Elisabeth took her, but she didn’t stir during the ceremony.

  Pastor Clarkson began with an obituary reciting Will Bishop’s dates of birth and death, his employment and community service record, the names of his late son and survivors, and a litany of his spiritual life.

  After Ben’s solo, Pastor Clarkson told Will and Elisabeth’s unusual story. “This was a man,” he concluded, “I would love to have known.”

  Elisabeth pressed her lips together. And I would have loved to have known him longer.

  Joyce took Lisa and left immediately after the service, so Elisabeth was alone at the burial. She had to steel herself as she watched the casket being lowered in the churchyard cemetery. But that was not as difficult as enduring yet again the condolences of nearly everyone present. Elisabeth knew they meant well, every one. She simply wanted to go home with her memories and her too-fresh grief.

  Propriety kept Elisabeth there until the last mourner left. She thanked Frances for the offer of a ride home but told her she preferred walking. She finally started home when the sun began flirting with the top of the trees. Two blocks away Elisabeth stopped and turned to see Christ Church silhouetted against the twilight. “Thank you, Lord,” she said, grateful for a church to come to not only several times a week, but also during every crisis in her life.

  As she turned again toward home, Elisabeth’s reverie was broken by the figure of a little girl poking a stick into a mud puddle at the next corner. She wore oversized black rubber boots and a red raincoat. As Elisabeth drew near, the blond hair told her it was Irene.

  “Does your mother know you’re still out, honey?”

  “Mm-hm,” Irene said, staring at the water. “Daddy too.”

  “Your Daddy’s home?”

  Irene nodded.

  “I didn’t see him at—”

  “Didn’t want to come. Said your husband really died a long time ago.”

  “In a way, he did.”

  “I know, Miz Bishop. You told us. I already changed my prayer list.”

  “You did?”

  Irene threw her stick into the street and turned to look at Elisabeth. “I took him off the top and put you there. That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, he’s dead now, right?”

  “You put me on top?”

  “You were second already, so now you’re first.”

  “I’m so happy you still have your prayer list, Irene.”

  Irene took her glove off and picked a stone out of the mud. “We all do. All your girls.”

  “That means a lot to me.”

  “You need a lot of prayer.”

  Elisabeth had to smile in spite of everything. “I do?”

  “’Course! You have a boy in prison, a sick daughter you haven’t seen for years, a dead husband, a dead boy, a daughter-in-law who doesn’t come to church, and a new granddaughter. See you Sunday. Bye!”

  Irene ran off before Elisabeth could respond. The little girl ran around the back of her house, and a door slammed.

  Elisabeth finally made her way home and walked across the painted wood porch that led to the door that had survived the fire and had been on that house since the day Will bought it. She entered to the dark comfort of familiarity.

  Upstairs Elisabeth sat on her bed and gathered her well-worn Bible into her lap. She let out a low chuckle. There was something to be said for the uncultured frankness of a child. “I do need a lot of prayer, don’t I?” she prayed silently. “And I have a lot to do.”

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  At eight forty-two A.M., January 1, 1965, the sun bullied its way through heavy draperies in Elisabeth’s front room. The old woman’s lids fluttered and she squinted from her overstuffed chair. Her feet remained asleep, angrily pinpricking her from their woolen cocoons. A bulky terrycloth robe covered her flannel nightgown, long sleeves enveloping balled fists, palms perspiring.

  As usual, Elisabeth had padded gingerly down the steps in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. Even with the three-way bulb at high power, reading had not been the answer. She had outed the light, tucked her feet beneath her, hid her frigid hands from the draft, and drew her knees up, hoping, praying, waiting for the charity of sleep.

  It had been years since Elisabeth had slept through the night. When first she had found herself staring at the ceiling in the wee hours, she attributed it to worry, worry she tried to pray away. She prayed for Joyce, for Betty, for Lisa, for Benjy. Betty and Benjy had finally, mercifully, died within months of each other more than six years before. Elisabeth had not seen her daughter for more than fifteen years except in pictures, and to see her in repose, her weeping Cliff standing guard, was almost more than she could bear. Why
had it taken Betty’s death to finally push her to scrape together the funds and head west? Yet the funeral strangely warmed Elisabeth, who learned of Betty’s vibrant faith and many friends. She even saw hints of what her daughter had seen in her husband, a gigantic, softhearted man. Elisabeth had returned with a modicum of peace and no more anxiety over her daughter, imagining her reuniting with her father and her brothers in heaven.

  Elisabeth had outlived her whole immediate family. The losses, all but Bruce, muted as the years passed. But Elisabeth had often awakened, eyes popping open and mind as alert as at midday, at the precise hour she had taken the fateful phone call from Joyce about Bruce so many years before.

  Joyce. How she had prayed for that precious girl who now seemed beyond hope. Her former daughter-in-law had kept her end of the bargain anyway; Elisabeth had to give her that. She had allowed Lisa many weekends at Grandma’s, Sunday after Sunday at Christ Church. Elisabeth stretched painfully as she recalled Lisa as a student in her own primary girls’ Sunday school class. How it both thrilled and wounded her to see so much of Bruce in her granddaughter’s deep, beautiful eyes.

  Had Elisabeth had her druthers, Lisa would have lived with her full-time. What a thing to do to a child! During the week Lisa lived in a trailer with her bitter mother and her succession of live-in lovers, short-term husbands, alcohol, violence, foul language, and who knew what else. Friday night she was dropped off at her grandmother’s echoing three-story house in the old section of the first ward.

  Elisabeth had fought for every hour with the child. She made it her business to counteract every evil influence, insisting Lisa bathe, keep a schedule, obey, learn manners, study, memorize Scripture, pray, and go to church. Lisa was remarkably compliant at first.

  Lisa reminded Elisabeth of herself as a child, enamored of church and God and Jesus. She prayed to receive Christ as a youngster and got in trouble with her mother for becoming judgmental and “too religious.” Joyce threatened to keep Lisa from her own grandmother, but the two pleaded so strenuously that she had to relent. Plus, it was clear Joyce wanted her freedom, especially on weekends.

  Lisa had blossomed into a nineteen-year-old beauty with dark hair and eyes. Elisabeth felt the differences in their generation every time she saw her now, and, yes, she worried—mostly about the men in Lisa’s life. “Don’t badger me about my dates, Grandma,” Lisa said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  But knowing what she was doing included thinking she could be a good influence on boys who had no interest in God. “It doesn’t work that way,” Elisabeth would tell her, and quoted Proverbs about how evil drags down good rather than vice versa. Lisa would roll her eyes, and Elisabeth feared coming off as a taskmaster.

  None of Lisa’s male friends were from Christ Church, and she hardly ever made it to Sunday school and church anymore. She had never really rebelled, as far as Elisabeth could tell, and Lisa still claimed to be a believer. But neither did they have the spiritual discussions Elisabeth so enjoyed when Lisa had been in junior high. Now that she had graduated high school, their relationship had changed.

  Lisa was a student at Western Michigan and worked as a nurse’s aide at Borgess Hospital. She seemed so grown up, and yet Elisabeth couldn’t shake the image of her as a newborn. “You’ll be the perfect nurse,” Elisabeth told her often. “So caring, compassionate, gentle.”

  Lisa would blush. “Where do you think I got that?” she said. “Certainly not from Joyce.”

  “Honey, don’t call your mother by her name. That’s not respect.”

  “That’s why I do it.”

  “We have to love her.”

  “Do you, Grandma? Can you, the way she treats you?”

  Elisabeth wanted desperately to say that she loved Joyce, but she could not. She was not capable in herself of loving the unlovable. “God loves her.”

  “You let her walk on you.”

  “Oh, she doesn’t—”

  “Of course she does! She knows you’ll do anything for her, but does she ever act like she appreciates it?”

  “I don’t do it for appreciation.”

  “Still—”

  “That’s enough now, honey,” Elisabeth would say, and they would talk about other things.

  Now, in her chair on a bitter New Year’s Day, Elisabeth closed her eyes again and prayed for Lisa. And for Joyce. Lisa was good enough to drop in on Elisabeth at least once a week. Joyce she hardly ever saw. Frances Childs remained a friend, and they had socialized more since Art’s accidental death in the welding shop at Fairbanks-Morse two years before. But still Elisabeth found herself desperately lonely. She was as close to God as she had ever been, despite that her increasing physical infirmities had made her drop her church service projects one by one. And while the Lord remained her refuge, as she liked to say, she had quit praying for relief from the crushing aloneness.

  The phone rang. Though it had been twenty years since the call about Bruce, still she hated that sound. Elisabeth planted her palms on the arms of the chair and remembered when she could lift her weight and swing her feet to the floor. Now it was all she could do to shift enough to force them out from under her. They caught in her robe and she had to painfully wiggle free.

  Elisabeth felt every one of her sixty-five years as she mince-stepped toward the phone. It rang and rang. Only one who loved her and knew she was home would be patient enough to wait. It was Lisa.

  “How are you, dear heart?” Elisabeth said. “Tell me you’re on your way to see me.”

  “I am!”

  “Oh, sweetie, that will be nice!”

  “Happy birthday, Grandma.”

  “So it is,” Elisabeth said. “And it will be happier when you get here.”

  “I’m coming to give you a bath.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Grandma! Do you have the phone up to your good ear?”

  “Agh! Just a minute … There. Now what?”

  “Bath! I’m coming to give you a bath.”

  “Heaven knows I need one, but don’t go to any trouble.”

  “You haven’t forgotten your luncheon today, have you?”

  “My what? My lunch—oh, that’s right! I tried every which way to talk Frances out of that. I don’t know why she insists.”

  “This is a milestone, Grandma! Sixty-five is nothing to sneeze at.”

  “Then why have I been sneezing all week?”

  “Are you ill?”

  “I’m still here. Can’t see, can’t hear, can hardly taste. Short of breath, hot flashes, aches and pains in every joint. But you know what?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “What am I going to say next?”

  “That the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

  “Amen and amen! I love you, Lisa.”

  “I love you too, Grandma. I’ll be there in an hour or so.”

  Elisabeth stretched the phone cord so she could lower herself to the piano bench. “Just let me call Frances and beg off. It’s supposed to be below zero today, too cold even to snow.”

  “It’s nearly ten below now,” Lisa said, “but it’s bound to rocket up to zero by noon.”

  “I don’t have anything to wear. No sense polishin’ and powderin’ me for the old dress I’d put on.”

  “Get yourself some breakfast and be ready for me, because I’m coming. And I just might have a present that will hush you up.”

  “Say! I thought grandmas hushed grandchildren!”

  “Then act your age and watch for me. Your driveway shoveled?”

  “Now don’t be volunteering for that—”

  “Grandma! I just need to know if I can pull in there.”

  Elisabeth leaned forward and pulled back the drape. The sun blinded her. “I can’t see a thing,” she said. “But the neighbor boy never misses.”

  Feeling gradually returned to her feet as Elisabeth turned on the burner for her tea. But when she sat to drink it she
could hardly move. It was sweet of Lisa to come on her birthday, and Elisabeth never ceased to be moved by her granddaughter’s sense of propriety when bathing her. Lisa helped her sit on a wood bench across the tub and had never once made her feel exposed or embarrassed. The girl merely helped her in and out and with extremities she couldn’t reach.

  That morning Lisa hurried in and put a large shopping bag on the table before rushing to the stove. “Grandma, you must remember to turn the flame off under the tea. You don’t want to lose another kettle, or worse.”

  Elisabeth, alarmed at herself, was too embarrassed to respond.

  “I gave the boy next door two dollars for the shoveling,” Lisa said.

  “I’ve never given him more than one-fifty. You’ll spoil him.”

  “It’s a new year. Give him a raise.”

  Lisa guided Elisabeth by the elbow toward the bathroom. “I expected you to have your robe and slippers off. Tuckered out today?”

  Elisabeth nodded. What would she do without Lisa? Her granddaughter washed her back and her calves and feet with such gentleness that Elisabeth nearly wept. “Your patients must love you,” she whispered.

  “They do,” Lisa said with a grin. “Especially the men.”

  “Stop that!”

  “I’m kidding, Grandma. You know I’m holding out for someone you’ll approve of.”

  “That’d be no one you’ve introduced me to so far.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” She wrapped Elisabeth in a huge towel and walked her upstairs, holding her close. Elisabeth found herself transported to her childhood. Hardly aware of her surroundings, she remembered her father enveloping her in a towel and gently rubbing her dry.

  Lisa set out Elisabeth’s undergarments, told her she’d help her with her hose, and said, “I’ll be right back.” Elisabeth’s lower back ached as she sat on the side of the bed and put on what she could. Lisa returned presently with the shopping bag.

  “Ooh, let me see,” Elisabeth said, but Lisa made her wait.

  She helped her with everything else, then said, “I’ll show you your new outfit, but don’t put it on until just before Frances gets here. Wear your robe till then.”