Heartbeat of the Prairie

Her name was Beulah.  She was quite a gal.  Completely admirable.  She was related to me through marriage (my grandfather and her husband were brothers) and lived not all that far from the Dahl spread. 

On a Sunday I called her caregiver and asked if we might stop by to see her after church.  “Of course!” she replies.  I hang up.  The phone rings again.   It is her caregiver.  “Honestly, I think you had better come right away.”  We went – John, Hannah, and myself.  We held Beulah’s hand, hugged her daughters, read precious Scriptures of promise in her ear, and sang her favorite songs to her.  She showed no response except brown eyes that followed our every move.  She heard.  She absorbed the precious Word of God.  She sang with us in the places of her soul inaccessible to the rest of us.

I came the next day by myself, and the next day too.  I read. I held. I sang. I hugged.  On the third night, with her loving, beautiful daughters buoying her up to the heavenlies, her soul left the broken shell that had once been a strong body, full of capabilities and keen intelligence.  No more suffering.  No more waiting for her ultimate freedom.

We filed into the tiny prairie church; her children, and grandchildren, and all of the greats.  Her nieces and nephews and their children.  Her former students and their children.  The townspeople who had known her forever. 

We sang, and read, and hugged.  We celebrated the extraordinariness of Beulah Long. 

Oh my.  I so hope my final earthly celebration is as joyful and inspiring!  Beulah made me want to accomplish a thousand things before my capable body is a broken shell.  I could not help but smile when I looked at the program.  Alongside the order of service was Beulah’s favorite dinner roll recipe.  She was famously hospitable.  I loved that about her.  I loved that her family represented that with a recipe.

Later, we drove the almost comically short funeral procession to the cemetery for the final goodbye.  The day was warm and the prairie breeze gentle.  I stood in the center of that immaculate cemetery, surrounded by ancestors I never really knew – my great uncle, my great-grandparents.  Standing there under the great bowl of blue sky I felt the connection to those ancient lives.  Although strangers, they helped form me.  Laid out a path for me by the choices they made, the children they raised, and the Lord that they served.  I am who I am in part because they lived.  They were not trying to shape the life of a far future daughter named Vonda.  But they did, nonetheless.

I looked at my husband and smiled.  As a gust of wind caught my hair and swirled it like a deeply exhaled breath, he asked softly, “Do you hear it?” 

I waited for more. 

It came. 

“Do you hear the heartbeat of the prairie?  The ebb and flow of life and death?”  I did not answer but instead listened.  I heard the meadowlark warble a song to its mate.  I heard the swish of the prairie grasses beyond the fenced boundaries of the cemetery.  I heard the quiet whispers of Beulah’s grieving family and the whimpered cries of her great grandbabies.  I heard the chatter of toddlers chasing butterflies, unaware that they should feel anything but utter joy on such a gloriously beautiful day. 

I did hear it.  I did.  I heard the pulse of the land – this place of endless horizon and azure skies.  I heard the heart of the prairie soil that both grows food in abundance and receives her sons and daughters back into the earth when their journey is done.

I knew in that moment – that quiet hushed moment - that Her heart beats within me as well.  This land, both breathtakingly beautiful and cruelly harsh at times, is etched on my soul.  My grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be who they are because I made the choices I did, served my Creator, and raised the children who will be their future parents. 

And someday…

Under an endless horizon and azure sky…

The Prairie will enfold me in her rich, dark soil and I will lie with my ancestors.  The ebb and flow will continue. 

Until that day, I will add my own unique story to her chronicles.