Grandmother's Wall

Born on a farm in Kansas in 1892, my grandmother knew about horse-drawn wagons, going into town for Saturday shopping, penny candy, pickle barrels, and rain water caught by those cleaned out barrels.

She used to tell me how exciting it was to go to the Saturday night dance in town. She liked one young man in particular. He was so handsome that all the girls watched him walk around the dance hall. His smile flashed like a bolt of lightning in her heart. She was so nervous around him that she couldn't speak.

One Sunday after church, her family joined the rest of the community at a barn raising. The women did the cooking over an open fire, and pumped the cool, sparkling water from the well. The children played with each other and alternated between running and laying in the shade. The men did the labor required to build a barn from the ground up.

A couple of hours after the lunch break, the framing had been completed and bricks were being laid along the walls that were complete. My grandmother was cleaning one of the cooking pots when she heard a yell from the men.

Turning quickly, she saw the only brick wall falling. Then she heard the crash. While the dust was still billowing, two men ran toward the rubble. They started frantically digging when they reached it.

“Looks like someone's under there,” her mother said, putting her arm around my grandmother.

When the men reached the body under the rubble, they pulled out that very handsome young man. He was dead.

My grandmother never got over the memory of that tragic death. Every time something sad happened in her life, she would say, “The pain, like that wall, is about to collapse on me.”