A week ago, like always after visiting my mother-in-law’s house in Delhi and arriving home, I grabbed my phone to announce that I had safely made the nearly three-hour drive through Gilbert, Crowville, Sicily Island and Vidalia.
The phone rang once or twice before it hit me: For the first time in 42 years, there would be no answer from that number ever again. My mother-in-law had passed. Ms. Della, her house, the central focus of a family, was no more.
Sometimes at my age, life doesn’t give you time to catch your breath when you are dealing with the deaths of family members and friends. It’s one of those things that come with being blessed to live a long life.
Over two days recently, I wished my cousin goodbye and I signed off on Ms. Della. Combined, I had known them for over 100 years, and I would never see their faces again.
Ms. Della was the rock of my wife’s family. She raised three daughters grinding through life as a wife, a single parent, a sharecropper, a cook, an ardent hat-wearing churchgoer and an amazing church choir singer.
By all accounts, her life was tough. But somehow she got two daughters through college. She saved and got a house in Delhi that would become the central gathering place for a family that stretches from Illinois to Texas to Nevada to Georgia to Florida to Mississippi and all points in between.
If relatives came to Delhi, they felt obliged to visit that quaint three-bedroom house with the nonstop kitchen and Ms. Della holding court. She’d take some people to task if she found out they came to town and didn’t visit.
But this woman was more than that. When her youngest daughter died, Ms. Della grabbed her two elementary-aged grandsons and raised them herself, making sure they were obedient, in school every day and in church on Sundays.
Both are grown, with their own children and working now. But Ms. Della had wide enough arms to wrap love around her grandchildren and great-grandchildren every time she saw them.
In her final years, she fought a number of illnesses, including COVID. But still, she expected to see family at her house. If you came to Delhi, you had to see her no matter your original destination.
One day, a couple months ago, she surprised many people when she mustered the strength to show up at church. She enjoyed it so much. She would never have that strength again.
But, I reflect on the first time I met her. I was 27 years old and dating her daughter. That evening she graciously welcomed me, and as nightfall came she showed me the space on the floor where I would sleep. Wait? What?
That morning, she served a huge breakfast that consisted of three different meats! This had to be some kind of plot to keep me.
Something else.
Somehow from the kitchen table, visits and the telephone, Ms. Della knew everybody in her family’s business, no matter the location. Community people would come by and she would get information on them. She should have started a social media site with that info.
The last time I saw her, we held hands, as she thanked me for spending time with her. I said the same. It’s like we knew this was the end. She even talked to my high school classmates on a Saturday telephone prayer line, thanking them for praying for her over time, and asking them to “keep praying for me.”
It is hard to imagine those gatherings in Delhi will never be again. Yes, there will be visits to other relatives there, but nothing will match Ms. Della’s house. It can’t.
One day someone else will live there. They will hear from everyone that it was Ms. Della’s house, and about how people laughed, hugged and loved there.
As for me, I hope there will be a Bible on a table and a lot of pots and pans going, and that the first breakfast will have three meats. Ms. Della and I would like that.
Email Edward Pratt, a former newspaperman, at epratt1972@yahoo.com.