In fact there are few...

"If you love somebody tell them...

better yet, show them!"

- Anonymous

It was a Tuesday afternoon when Mattie B. took her last breath, and one of the gentlest souls I have ever known in my life ended this part of her journey.  It was a painful loss.

For a little more than 30 years I spent the meaningful hours of my life as part of a Bible teaching ministry in the heartland of this country.  It is odd, in some ways, because at the same time I was teaching at university, unaware I would enter the world of chronic back pain – the furthest thing from my mind.  My work in spine, or so it seemed at the time, was not really the focus…on the motorcycle speeding down the highway of life, it was riding side car. 

I thought I had found my life’s work and would end my years teaching the scripture; ministering to others who shared uncertainties like myself.  I had slipped underground, picked up a shovel and begun the dig to find meaning in life.  Mattie was an anchor…a lifeline tossed just at the right moment…a piece of solid ground upon which to stand in the shifting sands of a young life.

Getting there

I had come back from the war, probably a little more troubled than I was willing to admit.  In those days, when troubled, I got busy…you know time and mind occupying activities to stay the tide, plug the dyke, withhold the fear, hide from the madding crowd…treading water in the sea of life trying to make sense of it all…or maybe just a little.

Undergraduate school in West Virginia had unexpectedly come along, followed by some graduate work in Wisconsin – all of it structured and mind occupying.  After finishing both degrees, I was faced with the same dilemma…you know, the meaning part. Don’t think too much, just work. Fortunately, there was another degree to complete before having to face…life.  It was in Missouri where it all began to catch up with me. 

There were a couple of years left in the doctoral program, things were slowing down a little and I could no longer avoid the call.  It had been a good run; but the secret had been revealed…one could not educate themselves into contentment.  Of the gold rings on the carousel of life, the reality did not match the expectation.  More knowledge?  Surely.  Answers?  There were few!  The great metaphor in my life reflected in the voice of the 1960s torch singer Peggy Lee; the refrain from the Leiber and Stoller lyric:

“Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is…”

What's the point?  Is there meaning?

It had a beginning

It was a chilly spring evening in late April or Early May of 1975 when I met Dick at a Pizza shop on a date with a friend.  She had been trying to introduce me to this fellow for some time, suggesting he was a little strange…like me.  She thought maybe we might find some resonance.  We did meet…we did resonate and there was little doubt he was – we were – different…that meeting and subsequent events changed the course of my life forever.

Mattie – words mean so little

Dick introduced me to a Biblical teaching ministry and as part of it I met Mattie B., a woman in her fifties, who touched my life in ways no other had before or since.  I do not have the vocabulary to describe this Mid-Missouri country woman, whose exposure to the world at large was very small; whose education was minimal; whose early life had been lived on a rural farm...BUT whose heart was of galactic proportion. 

Mattie was a peculiar woman.  Her voice gravely…speech plain spoken and direct…her inner ears had been damaged, so she heard through a sound conduction device that rested on the mastoid bone located just behind her left earlobe – looking like her head phone was out of place…behind the ear rather than on it.  She kept the pick up microphone clipped to her bra, so sometimes you had to speak into her chest for her to understand you…to the uninitiated onlooker, particularly new people visiting church – a strange and sometimes disquieting sight.

She was partially blind in one eye and ultimately would have it replaced with an artificial one.  She played the tuba in church and what she lacked in musical training – which was in fact non-existent – she made up for with spiritual enthusiasm.  Sometimes the spirit would inspire her to preach in church, and when she did there was indeed a ‘...mighty rushing wind…’

She was one of the elder mothers of this rural ministry, and as such taught the scripture, counseled younger members, and did what she did best…led by example. She worked in the church office, spending thousands of hours typing the scriptures and checking concordances for accuracy.  She was a pretty good cook, as long as it was solid country food…meat, corn bread, vegetables and potatoes…none of that, you know “…fancy stuff…”

She may not have had the educational, economic or social access dangled in front of us by the pressures of life, but whatever gifts she had been given she exercised to maximal potential.  You knew where she stood, and if she loved you there was nothing…there was ‘no thing’ that could separate you from it, and while I was not the only one…there was little doubt she loved me!

Over the years, this woman cut my hair, taught me, counseled and inspired me when times seemed darkest…a beacon of unwavering faith that appeared at the time, and until her death, bottomless.

None of this, however, tells even part of the story of whom or what this woman was.  Faith? Honor? Justice? Her life defined them.  Love? Compassion? Thoughtfulness? All of that and more. 

Her sense of humor…beyond belief.  Much of the laughter coming from her plainness of speech and use of whatever word worked for her in the moment – exactly correct or not.  Her directness of speech came without the social filters most of us are taught and brought with it, at times an unspeakable joy.

As the years moved forward, this woman had health challenges that would stop even the strongest of character.  The loss of sight in one eye and greatly reduced vision in the other; increasing deafness making it more difficult to hear; diabetes contributing to both and four failed back surgeries.  She was married to a fellow who spent more time away from home than not…and yet, and yet through all of this she gave everything she had to others…always to others…to me.

Her life was the antithesis of the Leiber and Stoller existential lyric.  She understood almost by instinct this life was only a preparation…really not much more.  Her life was not one of angst informed by ‘great thinkers’ working to solve the mysteries of life.  She had faith…she lived in the moment…what more could one ask or do?

The debt

How does one repay unconditional love from another human being?  How does one balance the books in relationships where there are no expectations, no desire for recompense, no pressure, not a whisper of a quid pro quo?  How does one express the influence another has had on their life that truly comes with no strings attached?  The answer, of course is, one cannot…there are no balancing of the books…there is only trying to live to the example. 

In life, if one were brutally honest, there are few who bring these things to the table.  In my life, Mattie was, without question or doubt, one of those.

In the end, before that Tuesday afternoon during a routine echocardiogram when Mattie gasped with surprise and took her last breath, I had moved to Michigan and we had lost the intimate contact we had had for so many years.  This spirit that had invested so much in me slipped quietly home, as the scripture says, “…to a place she had never been before…”

The payment

It is said everyone we have ever known is a part of us, and more so those who have invested deeply in us.  I am certain there are Mattie Bs in all of our lives, people who are worth remembering and telling others about…people who by their nature and character, not their education or access, inherently live by the maxim ‘…it is better to give than receive…’

Take a moment for one or two of them…

- ted