The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life

by Rod Dreher

  In the Orthodox Christian tradition, mourners keeping an all-night vigil read the entire Psalter over the body of the dead. I had planned to stay there until I had prayed aloud all 150 psalms over my sister, but her friends said they wanted to take part too. After Psalm 25, I handed my Psalter to someone else, and sat down. When I left at midnight, one of Ruthie’s oldest friends, Sarah Marquette Fudge, held Ruthie’s casket with one hand and the Psalter in the other, and prayed over the body of a woman with whom she had played dolls as a little girl.

  Ruthie’s colleagues, most of whom I was just getting to know, wanted me to appreciate what kind of teacher she was. That night was the first I had heard of Lyric Haynes, the child whose mother was in prison, and who had read the speech about Ruthie at the school assembly.

  When Ruthie died the teachers worried that Lyric, now in high school, would lash out at others and find herself back in the principal’s office for fighting. In fact she only asked that someone take her back to the middle school where Ruthie had taught her. She told them that she remembered the middle school as the place where teachers loved her. And she told them that she was going to do whatever she could to honor Mrs. Leming’s memory.

  “If you really want to honor Mrs. Leming,” one teacher told her, “you will be good and study hard, and go to college to learn how to be a teacher. Then you can come back here to work, and help other kids the way Mrs. Leming helped you.”

  “I’ll do it,” Lyric said.

  I had seen Lyric hours earlier at the wake, in the line passing by Ruthie’s coffin. I only figured her as one of the many former Ruthie students moving through the church that night. Until Ruthie’s teacher friends told me, I had no idea, no idea at all, of the drama of this child’s life, and the part my sister played in giving her love, and hope.

  As I drove back to Starhill, worn out, I thought once again about how little I really knew about Ruthie’s life, and how I understood even less. I had somehow come to think of her living in a small town as equivalent to her living a small life. That was fine by me, if it made her content, but there was about it the air of settling. Or so I thought. What I had seen and heard these last few days showed me how wrong I had been. When I got to my parents’ house in Starhill I found Mam at the kitchen table, eyes puffy, drinking a Coke. I told her the Lyric story. She said Lyric must have been the little black girl who spoke to her in line at the wake. “She told me, ‘Mrs. Leming is dead. Who is going to love me now?’ I’ll never forget that.”

  I said goodnight, brushed my teeth, and crawled into bed with Julie, who had picked the kids up at our cousin’s house after the wake and gone back to Mam and Paw’s to put them to bed. I told her all the things I had seen and heard since we last spoke.

  “It’s strange,” I said. “I find myself crying not so much because of Ruthie, but because of all the goodness of these people. It’s so… pure that it hurts.”

  Back at the church the party was just getting started. Ruthie’s teacher friends—Abby Temple, Rae Lynne Thomas, Jodi Knight, Karen Barron, Jennifer Bickham, Ashley Harvey, and others—gave her the send-off she deserved. Why? As Rae Lynne wisecracked, “Because we’re the funnest people we know.”

  They set up lawn chairs in front of the open coffin, just like at Ruthie’s beloved creek, and sprinkled creek sand onto Ruthie’s body. Ashley loves sparkles, and brought glitter to scatter on Ruthie, as a blessing. She even rubbed some on Ronnie Morgan’s bald head when he dropped by. They painted Ruthie’s fingernails so she would look good for her funeral. Emily Branton came by with her guitar. They all sang hymns, and “Brown Eyed Girl.” Karen danced for Ruthie.

  “It’s exactly the kind of thing Ruthie would have loved: laughing with her, crying with her, singing and dancing,” Abby remembers. “That is what Ruthie loved most: being around her friends and family, in her kitchen, and in her church. You just knew she was there with us that night, and loving it.”

  On the day of Ruthie’s funeral a man walked into the St. Francisville post office. “Sure are a lot of cars in town today,” a woman said. The man told her they were going to bury Ruthie Leming this morning.

  “Oh, that lady died?” the woman said. “I saw her in here just last week. I said to her, ‘Baby, you don’t look like you feel too good.’ She said, ‘No, ma’am, I don’t. But I’m gonna be good real soon.’ ”

  The line of mourners passing by Ruthie’s coffin for final good-byes started at ten. By early afternoon all the pews were filled, all the room to stand was taken, the church had folding chairs in the aisles, and still mourners massed on the lawn and the sidewalk out front.

  As the time for the services drew closer Abby felt numb. She had seen this day coming for a long time, and thought about what she would say to eulogize her best friend. But she didn’t put her thoughts together until a couple of hours before the funeral started.

  Five minutes before the opening prayer she told Karen Barron she didn’t think she could do it. She worried about what she would say. She worried about Mike and the girls. She worried how all this was going to play out for that family.

  She worried.

  “No, you can,” Karen said. “Just look at me when you speak, Abby. It’s going to be okay.”

  Mike, his children, and Mam and Paw sat on the front row. Ashley Jones, who had driven seventeen hours straight from Nebraska to get to her former teacher’s funeral, squeezed into a space along the wall. Stephanie Lemoine came up from Baton Rouge, hoping to claim a seat in the back. She had arrived early, to have a word with Mike as he stood once again by Ruthie’s coffin. Because her cancer was in remission, Stephanie, with her survivor’s guilt, worried about how she would be received, but as soon as Mike saw her, he broke into a fresh round of tears, looked directly into her eyes, and said the only word he could muster in the moment: “You.”

  Stephanie wept.

  “Ruthie loved you so much,” Mike said. “She talked about you all the time. You have no way of knowing what a blessing you were to her.”

  “I’m so honored to be here with her today, and with you,” Stephanie said. “I want you to know that I got a message from Sister Dulce on the day Ruthie died. Sister said that Ruthie’s body was worn out, but she was finally at peace. She is with Jesus, Mike.”

  That got to Mike. He tucked his head briefly. He looked at Stephanie again, and smiled. He told her he had saved a place on one of the front pews, where family was sitting.

  “I don’t belong there!” Stephanie protested.

  “Come on. You are like family,” Mike said with a finality that made Stephanie believe it was true.

  Jennifer Bickham played the piano that morning and didn’t think she could make it through. But she thought about Ruthie, and doing right by her, and held her ground. Making beautiful music for Ruthie’s funeral would be Jennifer’s final thank you.

  To the left of the altar sat the six pallbearers. Mel Percy, Big Show, and John Bickham were among them. These were big men who had avoided the pain of my sister’s passing by keeping busy and doing things for Mike and my parents. Now there was nothing to be done to distract themselves, nobody to care for, nowhere to go. They had to sit facing Ruthie’s coffin and deal with their grief. By this time I was used to seeing people cry over Ruthie, but watching tears roll down the cheeks of these strong men, impotent in the face of death, felt almost indecent. Men this tough aren’t supposed to break. These guys were broken.

  Pastor Jan began the service with a hymn, and prayers, and Scripture readings. Then Abby rose, strode to the pulpit, swallowed hard, and told the congregation that she had been missing Ruthie for a long, long time.

  “She was my sidekick, my partner in crime. And anytime I came up with some idea about something I wanted to do, ideas that most of the time would be categorized as stupid or crazy by most, she was right there with me,” Abby said. “I don’t remember ever asking her to join me, I just remember her being there by my side. And it’s been a while since she was physically able to do these th
ings.”

  Shortly after Ruthie received her cancer diagnosis, Mike Clark, a church friend and ordained Methodist pastor, asked Abby to ride with him out to Starhill to visit Ruthie. Abby told the congregation she wanted to share with them the passage from the forty-third chapter of Isaiah that Mike had read to Ruthie and her that long-ago day. It had meant a lot to the three of them back then, and set the tone for Ruthie’s fearless, faithful endurance through the trial ahead. Abby recited:

  But now, this is what the LORD says—

  “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

  I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

  When you pass through the waters,

  I will be with you;

  and when you pass through the rivers,

  they will not sweep over you.

  When you walk through the fire,

  you will not be burned;

  the flames will not set you ablaze.

  For I am the LORD your God,

  the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

  Out in the congregation Lyric Haynes snuggled close to Ashley Harvey, who had brought her to the funeral. Ashley was so glad she had Lyric to care for that day. It kept her from falling apart.

  After Abby’s Old Testament reading, Josh Gott, Mike’s Texas cousin, took the pulpit and read from the New Testament. Then it was my turn to stand and say something about my sister. I rose from the folding chair in the aisle, quietly asked God to give me the strength to say what I needed to say, then walked to the pulpit.

  Though I knew nearly every soul in the church that morning, I could not look them in the eye. Not if I was going to deliver this eulogy. Ruthie, I thought, pray for me. Help me do this. I fixed my gaze on the white wall at the back of the church, and began.

  I told the story about the time little Ruthie, five years old, confronted our father and demanded to take the spanking I deserved for having been mean to her. That, I said, was the kind of person she was. This memory overwhelmed me, and I lost my composure.

  Ruthie, help me. Please, help me.

  I wiped my eyes, cleared my throat, and continued.

  Ruthie’s death, I said, makes no more sense to me than it does to anybody in this church today. It was a cruel and unjust thing. Yet the history of God’s people is filled with cruelty and injustice. Cain slew Abel. Herod killed all the firstborn Jewish children. The crowds in Jerusalem demanded the murder of Jesus. And out of that pain, God brought forth salvation, and He would have us know today that there is meaning in suffering—in the suffering of Ruthie, now ended, and in the suffering of we who mourn her passing. It is a mystery that can only be grasped by faith.

  “On a day like today,” I said, “we may all feel so tired and sad that we can’t see the goodness in these events. But our faith assures us that, in the words of the poet W. H. Auden, ‘Life remains a blessing, although you cannot bless.’ ”

  All of you saw how Ruthie accepted the cup of suffering life passed to her, I told them. She did not despair of God’s love and care for her, nor did she doubt that His hand was in everything that happened. She remained steadfast in her love for Him and for others, and in her gratitude for the good life she had been given. The more her body declined, the more her spirit increased. We saw, here in our town, in the life and death of Ruthie Leming, a foreshadowing of the redemption of the world.

  “She showed us how to live,” I said, “and she showed us how to die.

  “You may not know this,” I continued, “but Ruthie was an organ donor. She gave her eyes so that some blind soul unknown to her could see. It seems to me that in a spiritual sense, Ruthie has given us all eyes to see. I want to see the world as Ruthie did, even just a little bit: as a place illuminated by love. I want to see every day as Ruthie did: as an opportunity to make other people happier. I once was blind, but through Christ, now I see. And through His amazing grace in the life of my sister, our beloved brown-eyed girl, I see more clearly. We all do.”

  I returned on my wobbly legs to my chair in the aisle. And then, to my surprise (because I had not read the program), the congregation rose to sing Ruthie’s favorite hymn: “Amazing Grace.”

  The procession to the Starhill cemetery, six miles south of town, was seventy-five cars long. To honor Mike and his family, fire trucks and ambulances sat in the median along the last mile, lights flashing, firefighters and EMTs standing at attention. Some people who lived along the route down Highway 61 stood in their driveways to pay their respects. Evelyn Dedon, the mama of baseball phenom Roy Dale Craven, sat on the hillside near where her little boy was killed all those years ago, waving in salute as another lost child of Starhill passed on by.

  As we pulled up behind the hearse in Mam’s SUV, we noticed the six pallbearers standing there in bare feet, the cuffs of their pants rolled high over their ankles. What was this? Inspired by the sight of Claire and Rebekah standing in church barefoot the night before, Mel Percy thought it would be a proper final tribute to Ruthie, who loved being barefoot, to cast aside their dress shoes and carry her to her grave with the wet green grass of Starhill between their toes.

  So those good men, the barefoot pallbearers, did, and it was a thing of beauty. Hannah, Claire, and Rebekah, seeing their mother’s friends standing in the road shoeless by her casket, took off their shoes as well. They stepped out of their black Ford SUV and Hannah, taking hold of her sisters’ hands, led them barefoot down the hill and through the grass to the graveside.

  Mike, the girls, and Mam and Paw sat on chairs next to the grave. Julie and I stood with our children behind them. My cousin Drew, whom I didn’t know well because I had been away for so many years, stood at my right shoulder with his wife, Jilliann. Before Pastor Jan began the brief service, Drew—burly old Drew, who looks like a pair of linebackers—leaned over and said in my ear, “Hey man, I love you.”

  That threw me. This family of mine—the cousins and their children—had been so terrific to us that week. Most of them live in or around St. Francisville. If I lived here, I thought, I could get to know them, and really love them. Drew has little idea who I am, in truth, but he loves me because I am family, and there we all were, we Drehers, in the Starhill cemetery once again, where all our dead are gathered, burying another of our own. Drew is not a tender man, but his words were sweet and true, and stayed with me the rest of the day.

  The barefoot pallbearers bore Ruthie down the hill and set her casket on the platform over the grave. Fighting back tears John Bickham thought about what a privilege it was to carry Ruthie Leming that day.

  After Jan and her assistant finished the final prayers, Mike rose, stood at the coffin, put his big, rough right hand on the foot of the casket, let it linger for a moment, then turned and walked away. The rest of us followed. There was nothing more to say, nothing more to do, but to let Ruthie go at last into the Feliciana earth, and rest a while.

  We all motored a minute away down Audubon Lane to Mel and Tori Percy’s big house for a much-needed drink. The Percys live on a generous, rolling spread that backs up to Paw’s place. It wasn’t long before their patio filled with family and friends who wanted to be together one more time in Ruthie’s memory. Nobody wanted the funeral or the somber graveside prayers to be the last word that day. If Ruthie were here, she would damn sure want a cold beer.

  There were hillocks of food there, much of it courtesy of the Methodist church women, and, this being south Louisiana, lots of beer, wine, and whiskey. About a hundred people were there, doing the same thing they had done every day since Ruthie died. During the party Abby pulled me aside and said she had never seen anything like what had happened in our town after Ruthie’s passing.

  “Rod, you haven’t lived here in a while, so maybe you don’t understand,” she said. “Somebody dies, you go over and take food and pay your respects, but you don’t see big groups of people coming over every night and staying, and drinking beer, and laughing. Everybody wants to be around each other. It’s so Ruthie! And look at this, here at Mel’s
. It’s all a celebration of her life. Everybody’s having a great time. God, she would have loved it.”

  It has indeed been an incredible thing to see, I told Abby, and a tribute to Ruthie’s gift for friendship. Everybody on Mel’s patio, in his living room, and under his carport that afternoon had at one time or another been a guest in Ruthie’s kitchen.

  “How did she do it?” I asked Abby. “How did she inspire all this?”

  “No matter who you were, Ruthie made you feel like you were it,” Abby said. “You were her family, you were always comfortable—‘Come in, sit down, let me fix you something to eat.’ Everybody was welcome in her house. You knew you were at home there, and everything was good.”

  At Mel’s that long afternoon we were all at home, and it was good, because Ruthie was there with us. Even in her absence, she was still the happy genius of the Starhill party.

  Back at Mam and Paw’s that evening, I thought about Mel, and John Bickham, and Big Show, and Abby, and Tim and Laura Lindsey, and all the men and women of this community who rallied to the Lemings and the Drehers from the beginning of our long cancer journey. I told my wife again that the purity of love these people showed to our family was so intensely beautiful that it was hard to look upon for long without feeling that it would destroy you. “Every angel is terrible,” the poet Rilke wrote, meaning that God’s messengers come to us with a beauty that inspires fear. To look upon beauty that powerful is to receive a calling and a command to change your life—and that can make you afraid.

  It can always be refused, but grace like that doesn’t come often in a lifetime. After we returned to Mam and Paw’s that afternoon, Julie and I talked again about the possibility of moving there. It sounded crazy, but after what we had seen these past few days, the foundation of our settled life had been cracked and was crumbling.

  We were scared, in a good way, because it felt like God was dealing with our hearts. My wife and I resolved to keep open minds, and to pray for guidance. We had a few more days in Starhill. Maybe things would become clearer.