Courting Buggy: Nurse Hal Among The Amish

by Risner, Fay

  Anna followed Hal out of the room. “I was surprised that your aendi was not along.”

  “We talked about it. Truthfully, with her being English, we didn't know if you would want Aunt Tootie to come see Peter now that he's so very weak.”

  “Ach, it is not a matter of what Jonah and I want. We want to fulfill Peter's wishes now. What is important to him is to have your aendi be with him as much as possible. He has asked for her every time he wakes up,” Anna said. “Would Tootie be willing to come sit with Peter, knowing that will help him die happy?” Anna's eyes filled with tears.

  Hal gave her a hug. “Aunt Tootie very much wants to be here. Her thoughts are with Peter all the time. If Jonah and you don't mind, I'll go home and get her. She will feel so much better if she can be with Peter.”

  Each morning from that day on, Hal left Tootie by Peter's bedside. She checked Peter's vitals and received a condition report from Anna. Each time she made the visit, she knew that Peter was declining. He slept more and took less nourishment.

  Hal worried about Peter's family and mentioned that at home. “Anna, Cooner Jonah and their children look tired from lack of sleep. Aunt Tootie should get more rest, too. The caring process is hard. The waiting and worrying about Peter is taking a toll on all of them.”

  John said he'd go over to sit with Peter that night. Jim offered to go along. Hal sent Emma to spread the word so others in the community could take turns sitting with Peter. That gave the family time to rest at night and get the daily chores out of the way.

  One morning when Hal and Tootie made their visit, Tootie patted Peter's shoulder. “It's Dolly, Peter.”

  He opened his eyes and smiled as he always did when he saw her. “Sit down and stay a while.”

  “I intend to. Is there anything I can get you. A drink or something to eat.”

  “I'm starved,” Peter replied. “I would like a plate of dippy eggs.”

  “Good! Wait a minute.” Tootie rushed to the kitchen. “Peter is awake. He's hungry, and he wants dippy eggs. Whatever that is.”

  “It's just eggs flipped over easy and served runny,” Hal told her.

  “What should he have?” Anna asked Hal.

  “It's been so long since he last ate, we should be careful. Have you some chicken broth he can drink. The dippy eggs is okay for sure if that's what he's hungry for,” Hal suggested.

  Anna set to work, and soon she handed Tootie a tray. Hal plumped up the pillows under Peter's head. “Now enjoy your meal,” Hal told him as she left Tootie feeding him.

  Anna and Hal listened from the other room. Anna said softly, “It wonders me that Peter is wanting to eat and seems more alert.”

  “That happens sometimes. Don't get you hopes up,” Hal cautioned. “Sometimes, a person will have a bright moment like that and die soon after.”

  Peter said, “You smell like roses again today. Nice smell that is.”

  Tootie giggled. “Thank you. Want to know a secret? I bought this perfume just for you.”

  “Denki, Dolly, for telling me. We were never very gute at keeping secrets from each other, were we? Ach, but the biggest one of all we did keep from everyone else and did it well.” Peter had a sad hitch to his voice.

  “You shouldn't dwell on that right now,” Tootie soothed. “Take another bite. You don't want these eggs to get cold.”

  “I will let it go now that I know you are going to help me. You promised,” he said, giving her an intense look.

  “Yes, I did,” Tootie said reluctantly. “Take another bite.”

  Peter sighed. “I am full now and tired.”

  “You should rest,” Tootie said.

  As Peter slipped back down in bed, he pleaded, “Dolly, you do remember your promise? Please help me.”

  “I said I would. Now rest,” Tootie appeased.

  Peter closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep. One he didn't wake up from again. John, Cooner Jonah and Samuel Nisely were with him through that night. His emaciated frame hardly made a movement except for his chest rising and falling.

  The next morning, Hal and Tootie came back.

  Anna met them at the door. “Peter is not breathing gute.”

  In the bedroom, Tootie stood at the foot of the bed, watching Peter's long wispy beard rise and fall slowly with hesitation between breaths.

  Hal said to Anna, “The doctor needs to come. Did Peter doctor with Dr. Burns?”

  “Jah,” Anna said.

  “I'll call him for you,” Hal offered.

  Dr. Burns drove in close to dinner time. Cooner Jonah met him at the door. “Wilcom, Dochtah. I'll show you to my father.”

  Dr. Burns examined Peter and said, “It will only be a matter of hours Peter has left. You can call the family in now.”

  By eleven that evening, Peter's bedroom was lit by two kerosene lamps. The room was full of family, standing around the bed. Their focus stayed on Peter's pallid face. His mouth gaped open, and every breath took effort.

  Before morning, Peter's raspy gasps stopped. Everyone in the room stopped breathing with him. After a few seconds, Peter's chest started to rise and fall again. That happened several times. Then came the time Peter didn't start breathing again. After a minute transpired, Tootie went to the kitchen for Hal. She checked for his pulse and told Anna and Cooner Jonah, “Peter ist todt.”

  “Hal?” Tootie whispered.

  “I just told them that Peter has died.”

  Cooner Jonah patted his father's hand and in a choking voice said, “It is God's will. My father is at peace now.”

  Anna wiped tears before she hugged Hal and Tootie. “Denki and God bless you both for helping Peter.”

  Peter's extended family and grandchildren clung to each other for a few minutes. Finally, the family moved from the room into the living room. Hal and Tootie went home. Cooner Jonah hitched up his buggy and went to the phone booth to call Doctor Burns. When he came back, the family worked out the funeral plans.

  It was not quite daylight when the doctor parked with the buggies in front of the house. As he entered, he looked around at all the family. Someone directed him to the bedroom. Dr. Burns made all the checks for signs of life. He asked Jonah and Anna some questions, made some notes, filled out some papers and left.

  John and Samuel Nisely washed Peter's body and dressed him in long johns. Cooner Jonah and Anna left to make arrangements at the funeral home in Wickenburg. The funeral director followed them home to pick up Peter's body, driving his horse drawn hearse.

  The men helped the funeral director lift the body on a covered gurney and into the back of the hearse. The next day just before noon, the funeral director brought Peter back in a pine coffin. John and Samuel helped Cooner Jonah and the funeral director place the coffin in the middle of the living room. John and Samuel dressed Peter in his funeral clothes, a white shirt and suit, and covered his face with a white cloth that went down to his waist.

  When they had Peter ready for the visitation and the funeral, Cooner Jonah pushed the roll away walls away to make the room bigger. Moses Strutt drove in with the bench wagon. The men carried benches in and set them in rows. Chairs were placed around the coffin for the family and three for the ministers.

  John and Samuel went home to get their families for the visitation. Buggies came a few at a time all afternoon to pay their respects and bring food. The coffin's top double doors were open and laying to the sides of the coffin. Cooner Jonah asked each visitor if they would like to view Peter. If they said yes, he pulled the cloth back so they could see Peter's face and say their good byes. After people stopped coming, Peter's family sat with his coffin that night.

  The next morning was the funeral. The possession was long. John drove his buggy in the middle of it, and Jim followed with Noah beside him to pay their respects.

  They parked as they would for a Sunday meeting service and walked among the other Plain people to the house. They left the horses hitched to the buggy since the service usually lasted only an hour and a h
alf. That time would go quickly, and they would stay lined up to follow the hearse to the cemetery.

  People went past the family seated facing the coffin. A woman ahead of the Lapp family said to Cooner Jonah, “I was so sorry to hear of your father's passing.”

  Cooner Jonah nodded. She moved on with sympathetic words for Anna and the rest of the family.

  An old friend about Peter's age said to the family, “Let us hope Peter Rogies is walking close with God now.”

  Cooner Jonah nodded solemnly “I am sure he is already.”

  The three ministers sat in chairs at the front of the room, waiting for the mourners to assemble. After awhile, no one else came through the doors. Everyone quietly waited. The ministers removed their hats and all the other men did likewise.

  Luke Yoder stood up and read Peter's obituary, starting with the birth and death dates and listed his family from children to grandchildren to who had been his parents, siblings and their children. When he finished the obituary, he quoted the scripture from Matthew. “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. The only way to find rest from our sins and our work is to come to Jesus Christ in faith and repentance. We need to submit our will to Him. Only then will we find rest.”

  Luke sat down, and Enos Yutzy stood up. He read the hymn, Amazing Grace, and sat down.

  Bishop Eldon Bontrager stood up to give the sermon. He raised his voice for all to hear him. “Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.

  While we do appreciate celebrating the life of Peter Rogies today, we are also reminded that as death is, it is the only thing that rescues us from sin. Our lives will end some day like Peter's life has ended, and if we have faith in Jesus Christ our freedom will come as Peter's has now for him. Our story is not about what we achieved on earth but rather about what we allowed Jesus to achieve for us and in us in this life and in eternity. Let us pray.”

  Bishop Bontrager bowed his head. The mourners followed his lead. “Dear heavenly Father, sometimes I think only of the pain of death. Today I thank you for the freedom death has brought Peter Rogies. I thank you Jesus who made a sinless eternity after death possible for Peter to find peace in. Amen.”

  The bishop sat down and Luke Yoder stood up. “In Romans it says, For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” He spoke to the Rogies family. “Whereas Peter has experienced physical rest, and the spiritual rest of sins were forgiven, we will experience that perfect rest only when we get to Heaven as Peter has found. Now the reading of the hymn, The Old Rugged Cross.” When Luke finished the song reading, he said, “Now we will file out and go to our buggies. Wait for the coffin to be brought out, and the hearse to leave then all of you follow.”

  On the gravel roads to the cemetery, the rattle of the carriage wheels on rocks crunched loudly under so many buggies. In the short time Hal had been a member of the Plain community, she had come to recognize that funeral sound. She connected it with a feeling of loss and sadness that came with death.

  As buggies parked, the four pallbearers carried the pine coffin across the cemetery over to the open grave. They set the coffin gently down on the two boards laid across the opening. The ends of two ropes stretched over the hole and into the grass beside the boards.

  After everyone gathered, Bishop Bontrager read the hymn, In the Sweet By And By, in German in a slow litany which seemed to hang on forever.

  When he finished, he bowed his head. “Now together we pray.” Everyone chanted, The Lord's Prayer, in German. “Unser vater der du bist im himmel.” While they prayed, the coffin was lowered by the four pallbearers. They picked up shovels from the mound and tossed dirt into the hole. Each shovel of dirt hit the coffin and scattered with a thunk until the wooden coffin was covered.

  As everyone prayed, Tootie felt a tickle on her ankle. She gave a startled gasp as she opened her eyes wide and stepped sideways, thinking she might be on a snake or have a spider crawling up her leg. With a measure of relief all she saw was grass blades waving in the breeze, tickling her ankle bone. As she looked around on the ground, she thought, At least it wasn't something that would bite. Not yet anyway.

  The long neat rows of the same size and shaped granite headstones were a strange sight. She was used to seeing all shapes and sizes of stones in the cemetery where her family was buried. She glanced at the stone beside the open grave. The stone didn't have Peter's wife's name on it. She would have to ask Hal about that. Why wasn't the man's wife beside him?

  A nervousness about what creatures might be in this country cemetery made her keep her eyes open. She intended to be very watchful until she was out of this lonely, grassy terrain. If there wasn't a snake lurking nearby, it was only because the creature was scared off by horses and human feet tromping the ground. The crawling serpents came back to their den when they could. She looked for slick holes around her. The only one she saw was near a small mound of dirt where gophers lived.

  It took more than people walking in the grass, and buggies making noise to scare off spiders. She sure didn't want a spider going up her leg. If she caused a scene at this solemn occasion, Hallie would be mad at her forever.

  When the service ended, Hal noticed Mary and Eli Mast wandering down the row of headstones. Mary lumbered along beside her husband, weighed down by her pregnancy. They reached the grave they wanted and stopped to pray.

  Mary slipped a bouquet of red peonies from under her cape and laid the flowers on the grave. Hal remembered the words on that headstone all too well. Hallie Mast, infant daughter of Eli and Mary Mast. A baby lost before she had a chance to begin life. Hal was honored by the baby's parents. They named the stillborn baby, Hallie, because Nurse Hal helped Mary with the delivery. Perhaps, the honor resulted because Nurse Hal took it so hard that the baby was lost on her watch.

  While Plain people had to be at the cemetery for the funeral, some wondered around the rows, stopping at certain graves to reminisce and say prayers for loved ones and friends. It was the way of Plain people not to cling to grief when they lost a loved one, because they thought their loved ones were in a better place. On a sad day like this when they had to be in the cemetery anyway, they felt the need to connect with the ones they had lost.

  In an orderly fashion, the Plain mourners climbed in their buggies, turned around in the road and headed back to the Rogies farm for the dinner. By the next day, life would go on as usual for all of them. Peter would only be a memory to summons up once in a while. Maybe with a story about him someone remembered fondly. Hal hoped that the stories wouldn't always be about Peter in his last days when the elderly man talked to family, his horse and dog that had died long before him.

  Chapter 18

  For the next couple of weeks, one day blended into the next for Tootie. Hal wondered what Tootie must have promised Peter for him to bring it up so many times. Did the promise have anything to do with the depression Tootie seemed to be in.

  Tootie certainly didn't have much to say. She washed the dishes and even stuck around long enough to wash the slop pail. That was enough for Hal to be worried about her aunt. She asked her mother if she thought Tootie was acting troubled. Nora said perhaps Tootie was mourning the loss of her friend.

  One Sunday morning, Tootie sat down at the breakfast table. “Where are we going to church this morning?”

  John said, “This is the in between Sunday. No worship service today. It is a day of rest or to visit with friends and family usually.”

  “At home, we have church every Sunday,” Tootie said quietly. “It's comforting to go to church. I forgot about this in between Sunday.”

  “We thought today would be a perfect day to have a family picnic,” Hal said.
“You know a better way to cheer everyone up?”

  “No, Dear. I guess not if anyone needs cheered up. That's why you bought all those packages of hot dogs and potato chips when we went shopping the other day,” Tootie said.

  “That's right. Emma baked extra bread yesterday. We can build a fire and roast hot dogs and marshmallows.”

  “I didn't see you buy any marshmallows,” Tootie said.

  “That's because I already had a package.”

  Daniel asked, “Dawdi, do you like to fish?”

  “Fishing just happens to be my middle name,” Jim said with a wink. “But I didn't bring a pole.”

  “We will loan you one of ours so you can fish in the pond with us,” Daniel said.

  Hal asked, “Noah, could you and Daniel put Molly in the horse pen for the day? I think we would have a better time in the picnic grove if she's caught.”

  Jim's head came up. “That's the horse I used on my buggy, isn't it? Why do you have to pen her up?”

  “Molly likes to come to picnics. She has a way of annoying Hal and Emma when she does,” John said, smiling at Hal. “I'll tell you about it later.”

  After breakfast, the women packed bundles. Emma brought the red wagon up by the back door to load. The men finished the chores. They hunted up their fishing poles and walked to the pond. Biscuit scampered to Emma and jumped on her, leaving two paw prints. She let out a long, “Ach!”

  Daniel grabbed the puppy and pulled him away from her. “He just wants you to pat him.”

  “Why is he loose?” Tootie wrinkled up her nose in disapproval.

  “We thought he would like to go on the picnic with us,” Noah said.

  “I see,” Tootie said as she lined up on the far side of Nora and Hal as they placed bundles in the wagon.

  The puppy trotted over by the chicken house and sniffed. A hen cackled and flew out the door to light in the grass near the puppy. He stood still. Every muscle quivered, and his nose twitched. Suddenly, he raised his head to the sky and let out a loud bay. The hen stretched her neck high and cackled again. The pup slinked toward her.