Old Leaves: Ringing the Bell for Mother

Today marks a whole year without you, Mother. It still hurts. I have wanted to call you from my morning walks out in California to tell you about your great grandchildren. I cut very few daffodils last February and March. How I would have loved to bring you a fistful of them! I can see your face lighting up at the sight. Or just be able to stroke your hair and talk to you about Daddy and your brothers and sisters and your Mama and all the things we talked about those last eleven days when you couldn't always remember what we'd just said, but did love to look at those pictures and name those names, even writing the names --- Charles Shaw, Lavay, Grady, Janice, Joan, Beth, David, Sheila, Gilbert --- carefully under each picture.

Here's what I wrote, sleep-deprived and sad, that Sunday morning

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I had not slept since 1:30 a.m., but still I slipped on my shoes, grabbed my walking stick and my hat, and at a little after seven, walked toward the church to ring the bell, as I had done many, many times since last March. 

Volunteers have been ringing the church bell in that fashion since the pandemic started and Sheila and I have taken a turn morning and evening one day each week for well over a year now. Often we'd leave the church parking lot at 7:20 on a Sunday evening and drive directly to Mother's house. (I always put out her garbage and recycle bins on Sunday evenings for pick-up on Monday mornings.) When we told her about the bell she would say, "I wish I could hear it ringing."

Yesterday morning at Floyd Hospital

So since Mother was so close by -- right next door at Floyd Hospital -- last night, I had told her and sister Carol as I left them at a little after eight, that if they listened from room 4520 at Floyd this morning, they'd hear Trinity's bell pealing seven and fourteen at 7:14 a.m. as a reminder of the scripture:

2 Chronicles 7:14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

As I walked up Avenue A toward Trinity United Methodist Church a while ago I thought of the saints of that church who once called the houses I passed and others in our neighborhood home: Dot and Lewis Walden, Lewis's parents before him, and his brother Billy who died so young in the Winecoff fire; Miss Annie Beth Terrell who loved my family and hosted my fellow teenagers for MYF retreats at her cabin under Mount Alto and sent me goodie packages when I went off to college; the Parkers and Kings and Reeces and McCrarys and Ables and Latimers; Miss Lottie Duncan who was Daddy's first secretary. 

A Mourning Dove accompanied my thoughts with its sad song as i walked. I am not so arrogant as to pretend I know how things work when lungs no longer suck at the air and hearts no longer pump nourishment to our braincells. But this morning I imagined that cloud of witnesses welcoming another to their midst. And I imagined my father, and my mother's father and mother, there with big smiles and open arms. And I imagined them listening together as I pulled the knotted rope and rang that old bell that has sounded from that belfry for 135 years. I imagine Mother saying, "Terry said he'd ring it this morning."

Sarah Ruth Baird Shaw died peacefully in the wee hours of this Sunday morning. 

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I sang for Mother dozens of times the last week and a half. This is one of her favorites:

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father
There is no shadow of turning with Thee
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be
Great is Thy faithfulness, great is Thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love

Great is Thy faithfulness, great is Thy faithfulness
Morning by morning new mercies I see
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me

Here is a post I wrote for Mother in 2013 on the occasion of her nintieth birthday:

Ruth Baird Shaw

We will celebrate my mother's birthday ten days early on February 9th -- this coming Saturday -- with a party at Trinity Methodist Church here in Rome. 2-4 p.m. Y'all come. 

(Edited February 10, 2013: We had a great day celebrating our mother yesterday. Each of the seven siblings took part in the program. Our brother-in-law Chuck Roszel added some heartfelt extemporaneous remarks at the end as well. I sang two songs, "The Love of God" during my remarks, and "Amazing Grace" with the congregation joining in, at the end.  Here are (approximately), my remarks.


My Mother is an amazing woman. 

I’ve always known that. 

Ruth Shaw is a very active woman -- creative, determined, dedicated, caring, independent, and sharp as a tack -- who will turn ninety-years-young on February 19. 

And I remember her thirtieth birthday, when I would have been almost six. I thought that sounded sort of old then. 

I remember walking hand in hand with her at about that time down Main Street of little Mackville KY from the Methodist parsonage to the elementary school for my first day of first grade. I remember the comfort of that hand.

And I remember the utter shame of having to walk the long blocks from Fourth Ward Elementary in Griffin GA toward our little parsonage on South Ninth Street carrying a note from Mrs. Giles about my third grade misbehavior. I would have to present that evidence of my black heart to my wonderful mother. I no longer remember the particular sin, but I do remember that I did not want to disappoint Ruth Shaw. 

My mother read to us. I can see the Bible story book in my mind’s eye. One of these days I want to find that book and buy one to have at my house. I loved those stories. Even more I loved the one who read them to us. 

I remember Mother walking me and Carol and Debbie down College Street to Griffin’s Hawkes Public Library to load up on Hardy Boy books, and Jim Kjelgaard, and boyhood biographies of Lee and Washington, and such, AND stopping by the bakery nearby for gingerbread men on the way home.

I remember the pride and awe of hearing her singing beautiful harmony with my Daddy --  “The Love of God” --  at a Sunday night service at Midway Methodist. So in honor of that but without the harmony -- unless some of you want to provide it and feel free! -- I’d like to sing that old song.

1. The love of God is greater far

1. Than tongue or pen can ever tell;

1. It goes beyond the highest star,

1. And reaches to the lowest hell;

1. The guilty pair, bowed down with care,

1. God gave His Son to win;

1. His erring child He reconciled,

1. And pardoned from his sin.

• Refrain:

• Oh, love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong!

• It shall forevermore endure—The saints’ and angels’ song.

1. Could we with ink the ocean fill,

1. And were the skies of parchment made,

1. Were every stalk on earth a quill,

1. And every man a scribe by trade;

1. To write the love of God above

1. Would drain the ocean dry;

1. Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

1. Though stretched from sky to sky.

We thought we’d arrived in heaven -- at least I did -- in 1958 when we moved from the modest little parsonage in Griffin to the brick mansion-in-my-eyes at Ellijay. On the day we moved Daddy pulled the car onto the shoulder along Highway 5 as we neared Ellijay to soak in an amazing sight. The white clouds in an azure sky had nestled onto and around the mountains, allowing those magnificent  summits to peek out above them.  

I have many good memories from Ellijay, but a terrifying one occured about 1960. David a toddler decided to spread the ends of a bobby pin and poke them into an electrical outlet. Luckily the circuit he completed was broken when the pin burned in two and dropped to the wooden floor where it burned a permanent record of the event. Mother handed the convulsing David to me to hold while she drove us down Dalton Street toward the doctor’s office. Her calm calmed us then and often since, even when she was the one suffering and we should have been the ones soothing.

Like every Southern family at the time, our extended family members were not unanimously accepting of the tumult of the day. I remember with pride my bashful Mother defending Martin Luther King in some family discussions -- well before it was the popular thing to do.

I could go on and on. 

I love my mother not just for herself, but for those who loved her enough to guide her toward the person she has become. Those include my grandmother Ieula Ann Dick Baird, who as a widow raised her eleventh child to revere the father, Wilson Baird, she lost when she was only nine, to love the God who had guided him, and to love Ieula’s own grandfather, Bogan Mask, who had shown kindness to mistreated slaves and bravely stood for his beliefs as a licensed Methodist exhorter and took in Ieula, her siblings and her widowed, pregnant mother when Charles Ervin Dick died at 35. 

I love her for the the quiet bravery, dedication to duty, and love of God exhibited by her brothers and sisters, and the love of a young husband and his band of precocious, mischievous brothers, gregarious Daddy Shaw, and determined Mama Shaw. 

I love her for my inspiring siblings, whom she reined in when needed, but to whom she gave the reins when they were ready.

And of course there are the “lemon fluff” frozen desserts she made in ice trays, snow-cream during our Kentucky days, the cinnamon yeast rolls on Christmas mornings, and the traditional little bottles of Welch’s Grape Juice in our stockings, banana pudding on other special occasions, the cornbread dressing with the big Butterball turkey at Thanksgiving, date-nut cakes on my birthdays... my mouth is watering.

Which brings us to some verse I wrote for Mama many years ago now. 

Dandelions in a Milk Carton

Thank you, Mama, 

For nursing me and diapering me,
for a dry set of sheets when I wet another,
for the Bible story book and Uncle Remus,
for all five sisters and my little brother, 

And all the good eating stuff
Like biscuits from wooden bowls
and datenut cakes and lemon fluff,
and Russian tea and yeast rolls  

For Jesus-loves-the-little-children and Deep-and-Wide,
For walking to school that first day by my side
And for your loving smile when I came in a run
with dandelions in a milk carton for all you’ve done.

I remember with pride how as a widow in her early sixties my mother followed her heart, her calling, and her conscience, despite her bashful nature, to take over my father’s ministry, complete seminary, become an outstanding preacher, and successfully minister to several churches and many hurting people in the years since. Many times this was while she heroically faced one of the most debilitating and painful diseases known to mankind (Trigeminal neuralgia) and its resulting brain surgeries and medications -- and later facial surgery and cancer.

Everyone has always assumed Mother to be younger than her actual age as long as I can remember, and she still seems much younger than what the calendar indicates. I have always believed my Mama the prettiest, smartest, and kindest one around -- and, of course, also the best cook. Still do.

Happy birthday, Mama