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

by Rod Dreher

  “What do you mean?” my son said.

  “You know when Mom told you that the day was going to come when it might be impossible for you to make things right? At some point in our relationship, that’s what happened to Aunt Ruthie and me. I can’t say for sure when things went bad, or why, but I’ve got to face the fact that a lot of this is my own doing.”

  Matthew looked down, his eyes in shadow.

  “Honey, Aunt Ruthie is gone, and I can’t make it right with her,” I said, taking his hand. “She had a chip on her shoulder about me, and she was wrong about that. But your daddy had a lot more to do with putting it there than he realized. Please don’t end up like me, with your brother in the grave and you not able to do a thing except feel bad about what you did, and what you didn’t do.”

  “Okay, Dad. Goodnight.” He kissed me on the top of the head, and padded off down the hall to bed. I don’t know if my words will have done any more good than Mam and Paw’s did to me at the same age.

  Why did this epiphany about my own culpability in the fate of my relationship with my sister give me so much peace? Because I began life with a sister who loved me so much that she was willing to take the punishment I deserved for being cruel to her. How might things have been different between us if I had been more decent to her when we were children?

  I was not an unkind brother in adulthood, but I wasn’t around much either to show my sister how I had matured. As our father did, Ruthie saw the world through fixed ideas; once she convinced herself she had someone figured out, she was not open to revising her judgment. With regard to her brother, this was her tragedy.

  And with regard to my sister, here is mine: the first fourteen years of her life she spent shared with me, during which time I provided her with ample evidence to justify her verdict on my character. And my decades-long absence allowed that childhood narrative to cloud her judgment and harden her heart.

  I spoke to Ruthie in my prayers that evening, confessing my sorrow over the way I treated her as a child, and asking her forgiveness. I have faith that from her place in heaven, with her nature perfected by the love of our merciful God, she gave it to me. And so, I was finally at peace.

  One day in May the mobile phone in Mike’s pocket buzzed. It was the monument company, telling them they were going to deliver Ruthie’s headstone the next morning, May 15. It was fitting; had Ruthie lived, that would have been her forty-third birthday.

  The two men showed up just before ten a.m., as planned. I drove up right behind them and saw Mike standing in the shade—it was a hot morning—in a T-shirt and jeans, watching the pair turn the earth at the head of his wife’s grave, preparing it for the dark granite stone. I walked down the hill toward Mike, careful not to step in one of the fire ant mounds dotting the neatly trimmed grass lawn. The subtropical sun was already so fierce that I broke a sweat in the half a minute it took me to reach Mike.

  “Mike, if you’d rather be alone, tell me,” I said. “I just didn’t want you to be by yourself this morning.”

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  Mam and Johnette Rettig drove up and joined us, and then Paw stopped by in his pickup, on the way home from his doctor. He stood at the top of the hill, leaning on his cane, and said he didn’t think he could stay. We waved him off. Johnette said good-bye as well, leaving just Mam, Mike, and myself, and the workmen.

  The two workmen, the younger one black, the older one white, were soaked with sweat by the time they heaved the headstone into place. They wiped their faces, then stood by us at the foot of Ruthie’s grave. The monument read:

  LEMING

  “Ruthie”

  LOIS RUTH DREHER

  MAY 15, 1969

  SEPTEMBER 15, 2011

  BELOVED DAUGHTER, SISTER, FRIEND WIFE, TEACHER, MOTHER

  “Today was her birthday,” said the young black man. “That’s something, ain’t it? Sound like she was a good woman.”

  “She was,” said Mike.

  I looked at the black man. He was crying. Mike thanked them for their work, they said good-bye, and drove away.

  Mike, Mam, and I stood alone at the foot of Ruthie’s grave. Then I recited the Lord’s Prayer, and Psalm 23. We remained there quietly for a moment, then Mam tapped me to indicate that we should leave.

  “I love you, buddy,” Mam said to Mike. “Thank you for making her life so happy.”

  We walked up the hill, got into my car, and drove away, leaving Mike there alone with his grief and loss. By then there was no shade left in the cemetery. How long he remained in the scorching sun that morning before going home, I don’t know. For eight months Mike had been in the fire, unreachable. But it had not consumed him. Quietly, faithfully, he endured. Ruthie, who knew what this man was made of better than anyone, would not have been surprised.

  Never would I have imagined that I would spend the morning of my little sister’s forty-third birthday in the graveyard, watching workmen heave her tombstone into place. But nobody ever thinks about these things when they’re young. Nobody thinks about limits, and how much we need each other. But if you live long enough, you see suffering. It comes close to you. It shatters the illusion, so dear to us, of self-sufficiency, of autonomy, of control. Look, a wife and mother, a good woman in the prime of her life, dying from cancer. It doesn’t just happen to other people. It happens to your family. What do you do then?

  The insurance company, if you’re lucky enough to have insurance, pays your doctors and pharmacists, but it will not cook for you when you are too sick to cook for yourself and your kids. Nor will it clean your house, pick your kids up from school, or take them shopping when you are too weak to get out of bed. A bureaucrat from the state or the insurance company won’t come sit with you, and pray with you, and tell you she loves you. It won’t be the government or your insurer who allows you to die in peace, if it comes to that, because it can assure you that your spouse and children will not be left behind to face the world alone.

  Only your family and your community can do that.

  Because of our own mutual brokenness, the considerable affection Ruthie and I had for each other did not penetrate either of our hearts as it ought to have done. But through Abby, Tim, Laura, Big Show, John Bickham, the barefoot pallbearers, and everyone else in the town who held our family close, and held us up when we couldn’t stand on our own two feet, I was able to see the effect of Ruthie’s love, given and returned, in steadfast acts of ordinary faith, hope, and charity. The little way of Ruthie Leming is the plainest thing in the world, something any of us could choose. And yet so few of us do.

  In the way Ruthie embraced her suffering, and through the compassion of the good people who carried her to the end, I was able to feel for the first time in nearly thirty years a profound and overwhelming affection for this place, and gratitude for what the people who stayed behind held in trust for me. In the quiet drama of my little sister’s life and death in a sleepy river town, I experienced the power of love to make the entire world new.

  These are my people. This is where I’m from. Ruthie showed me that.

  I have wandered in my own way for half my life, and have no regrets. That was my role for a time. Now, though, I want to track, at my own pace and rhythm, the Little Way of Ruthie Leming.

  If you had driven past the Starhill cemetery late one hot night in May, you might have seen strange figures lingering around a grave in the bottom under the hill. After a year-end meeting at school, Abby Temple, Ashley Harvey, Karen Barron, Jennifer Bickham, Tori Percy, and Rae Lynne Thomas came to be with Ruthie on her birthday. They called Mike, who met them there. They opened a bottle of wine, poured seven glasses, and drank to the memory of their brown-eyed girl. There, where all the dead of Starhill are gathered round, they laughed and told stories, and remembered the good times. Had you been there on that night under the live oaks and the crape myrtles, you would have seen that even from the grave, Ruthie Leming bestows life on those who are willing to receive it.

  THE END<
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  Acknowledgments

  It is difficult to find people at the very top of the journalism profession who are humble, kind, and generous, but David Brooks is exactly that. His columns in the New York Times opened the door for me to tell the story of my sister, my family, and my community. I owe him more than I can ever repay. Gary Morris, my agent, believed in Ruthie’s story, and advocated for it beautifully. I thank my editor, John Brodie, for also believing in this story, for making it incomparably better than it would otherwise have been. The man has earned a platter of oysters and a bottle of cold Sancerre—and I promise not to insist that metaphysics is a reliable guide to dinner.

  I also owe a debt of gratitude to Steve Waldman, Gary Rosen, and Wick Allison, all of whom at some point gave me the opportunity to write a blog, from which this book was eventually born. Additionally parts of the narrative appeared in an earlier form in a column on National Review Online, and in a piece in the Wall Street Journal; my thanks, respectively, to Rich Lowry and Erich Eichman for publishing my work. My blog readers, too, have my deep appreciation; their loyalty over the years makes my vocation possible. I also owe a profound debt of gratitude to Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, whose generosity pulled me out of a deep hole and gave me my writing career back.

  Ruthie had been dead only four months when I began interviewing her family and friends for this book. It was difficult for some—especially in her family—to speak of her so soon. I am grateful to them for their courage, and in particular want to thank Mike Leming. Mike is a man of strong emotion but few words. Only four months after the love of his life died in his arms, he opened his heart to me for this book. Watching that good man tell of his life and times with Ruthie, and her death, felt to me like standing at the base of a mountain during an avalanche. He knew, though, that sharing his part of the story with the world was both the greatest tribute he could give to Ruthie and an enduring legacy for their children. This book would not have been possible without him. Along these lines, I thank Hannah, Claire, and Rebekah Leming for talking to me about their mother, and for allowing me to invade the privacy of their lives for the sake of telling others about Ruthie’s life and legacy. The same is true of Ray and Dorothy Dreher, my parents, who did not find it easy to talk so intimately about their daughter so soon after her death. Their openness and courage have bequeathed to generations of our family yet to be born a priceless inheritance.

  The people of Starhill, and of West Feliciana, have my profound thanks, first for what they gave to my family in our time of need; second, for sitting with me for hours, talking about Ruthie; third, for welcoming us so warmly. “I hope you know how special that place is,” said a Washington journalist friend. “You come from one of the last real places in America.” I do, and I do. I hope they will read this book as a tribute to their own capacity for love and generosity. Ruthie’s story is their story too. It is my honor to be able to tell the rest of the world about these fine people.

  In part this is a book about the difference in a life a teacher can make. Writing it, and talking to people whose lives were changed for the better by Ruthie’s love for them in the classroom, made me more aware of the debt of gratitude I have to my own teachers. First and foremost, there is Nora Marsh, who rescued me. My deepest thanks also goes to the teachers and staff of the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts, in Natchitoches, who took a sad, lost kid and gave him a new life.

  A number of friends read various pieces of this manuscript during the writing process. I am indebted to them for the gift of their time, and for their advice. I’m thinking in particular of Dewey and Michelle Scandurro, Leroy Huizinga, Erin Manning, Sela Ward, Jason McCrory, Paul Myers, Thomas Tucker, Josh Britton, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Mike Leming, Dorothy Dreher, John and Mia Grogan, Stephanie Lemoine, Abby Temple Cochran, John Bickham, Steve “Big Show” Shelton, James and Ashley Fox-Smith, and Tim and Laura Lindsey. They all helped me to tell this story more truthfully. To the extent I have fallen short of that goal, the fault is my own.

  Finally I owe everything to my wife, Julie, and my children, Matthew, Lucas, and Nora. Writing a book is a family affair. Julie made it possible for me to devote long hours to this book. She knew how important it was to our family, and to me personally, to tell this story. She is my best reader, and my best friend. The kids stood every night with their parents before our icons, and prayed for Dad to do a good job on his Aunt Ruthie book. I trust the Lord heard them. Their father loves and cherishes them, and hopes they, along with their Leming cousins of Starhill, will treasure this true story of faith, hope, love, and family—our family—take it into their hearts, and build on what they have been given. May they know that wherever they go in this world, their father’s love and their father’s blessing goes with them. And may they rest assured that they can always, always come home.

  About the Author

  ROD DREHER has been a writer and editor at The Dallas Morning News and a columnist and critic for National Review, the New York Post, and The American Conservative. Dreher is a popular writer on issues of religion, culture, and localism. David Brooks called him “one of the country’s most interesting bloggers.”

  The author’s first book, Crunchy Cons, was published in Crown Forum hardcover in 2006.

  Ruthie Dreher Leming, February 2010, days after her cancer diagnosis. Courtesy of Jeannie Frey Rhodes

  Ruthie at age five.

  Mam, Rod, Ruthie, and Paw, on the day Rod left for Washington, DC; 1992.

  Mike Leming and Ruthie Dreher; December 30, 1989.

  Mike arriving home in Starhill from his tour of duty in Iraq; July 14, 2008.

  Aunt Hilda (left) and Aunt Lois (right) holding baby Rod; 1968.

  Ray “Paw” Dreher and Dorothy “Mam” Dreher, on their back porch.

  John Bickham, a surrogate son for Paw.

  Ronnie Morgan

  Abby Temple Cochran and Ruthie.

  Dr. Tim Lindsey, at Ruthie’s kitchen table.

  The Leming family: (left to right) Claire, Mike, Rebecca, Ruthie, and Hannah. This photo was taken days after Ruthie’s diagnosis. The family wanted to have a portrait taken before Ruthie’s appearance changed because of chemotherapy and radiation. Courtesy of Jeannie Frey Rhodes

  Three generations of West Feliciana homecoming queens: Mam, Ruthie, and Hannah.

  Ruthie and daughter Claire in the hospital after her diagnostic surgery; February 2010.

  The author and his sister, Ruthie.

  Mike on the day Ruthie’s tombstone was delivered to Starhill Cemetery; May 15, 2012.

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  Contents

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  One: Country Mouse, City Mouse

  Two: “Forever and a Day”

  Three: A Family of Her Own

  Four: Sweet Babies

  Five: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost

  Six: The Peppers

  Seven: The Bright Sadness

  Eight: Standing in the Spirit of God

  Nine: Expecting a Miracle

  Ten: “I’m Scared”

  Eleven: “The Choir Invisible”

  Twelve: Lean on Me

  Thirteen: The Narrow Path

  Fourteen: One’s Destination Is Never a Place

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Photos

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2013 by Rod Dreher

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual prope
rty. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Grand Central Publishing

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  First e-book edition: April 2013

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  Lines from Charles Péguy’s poem The Portal of the Mystery of Hope come from a 1996 translation from the original French by David L. Schindler Jr. and are used with the permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

  All photographs are courtesy of the Dreher family, unless noted otherwise.

  ISBN 978-1-4555-2190-6