[With unfailing regularity, my mother used to nudge her kids along by telling us to please "clean up after." She wasn't harsh or demanding, but the injunction was so often repeated that Dad picked it up and needled her with it. "Come on now," he'd say, "we gotta 'clean up after.'"
These days I'm doing a lot of it, as does about everyone my age, I'm guessing, because after 75 years there's lots to "clean up after."
That's what I was doing when I ran across this fifteen-year-old blog post. I hadn't exactly forgotten it--but it's one of thousands. Let's just say I retrieved it from the dustbin while "cleaning up after."]
Oostburg, Wis.Oct. 28, 1943
Mr. and Mrs. Abe Bleeker & other relatives,
This little letter must serve to tell you the sad news of the death of my dear wife. your Aunt Gertrude, after a lingering illness. She had reached the age of sixty-one. The funeral will be held Saturday P.M. Will you tell Ray and family and Neal? You may also tell Mrs. Bleeker, Gerrit Te Krony, and any others you might think of. Maybe it might be well to tell your minister. Bemis, Palmer--was my first charge. She died yesterday at seven P.M.
I certainly will miss her. May the Lord give strength.
Your uncle,
J. C. Schaap
GOT THIS NOTE IN THE MAIL from a distant relative whose mother died in California. She was the original recipient of the letter. J. C. Schaap was my grandfather, who, in 1943, was holding forth from a pulpit in Oostburg, Wisconsin, the front window of the parsonage where he lived festooned with five stars--five children in the war effort in Europe or the South Pacific.
Grandpa was not a blogger. If he were, I'm sure he would have left a more ample record of what was in his soul, even in his bones, amid the grief at his wife's death. But these words and this letter is all there is--just the facts, and then "I certainly will miss her." The totality of his grief spelled out in just five words.
He must have sat down with paper and envelopes and a bunch of penny stamps, then written a number of similar notes to aunts and other relatives, one after another, bringing the news, a day after she died. Strains of fatigue seem evident. I'd be surprised if there weren't others in the parsonage that day, his children and in-laws beside him, helping him try to sweep up after death, as Emily Dickinson might have said.
The hand looks very steady, the lines as flat as stone, and the paper, although yellowed, looks as if the letter could well have been opened yesterday. This slip of paper has a history after it was written too. My guess is that Mrs. Bleeker likely never took it out of the envelope again. That penny stamp is cut out of the old envelope, probably a gift to a grandchild; but the letter holds its crease as if my grandma's death had taken place just a week ago.
But Mrs. Bleeker kept the letter. She never tossed it. It was, after all, significant family history. When she died, her relatives went through her stuff, where they found it with some other family things, then sent them to a relative who cared about such things; and that relative sent it to me. It sits here on my desk like an old man's hand, full of creases.
I never knew my grandmother. I'm told she was a saint. People say that she was warm and loving; I've never heard anyone say anything negative about her, including my mother, her daughter-in-law.
I'm sixty; she was only a year older when she died right there in the Oostburg parsonage.
I've doubt my children will keep this old letter when someday they stumble on it when they're sweeping up after death. I don't know that this stiff note will matter to them in the same way it does to me--after all, I remember my grandfather and I know the house in which his beloved wife died. Memories don’t give up such images easily.
When I hold what it holds so stiffly in my hands, it carries me into another life, someone else's great sadness, beclouds my worries, if only for an hour. After all, this short letter doesn't lie about life like many things tend to do.
This morning, I'm thankful for what seems as dutiful as a business letter, wrung from the soul of an anguished believer who must have felt suddenly, even in a house full of comfort, very much alone.
I'm thankful for the sparse acknowledgement of his sadness because somehow, so many years later, it's still a blessing:
"May the Lord give strength." Yes.
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