I make a pastoral visit

Written a couple of years ago but not published, for privacy reasons. "Alice" now lives in long-term care, not all by herself:

In The Country Parson, 17^th century English cleric and poet George Herbert noted the role played by a clergyman’s wife. It  included the “curing, and healing of all wounds and sores with her owne hands.”  The pastoral concerns of a country parson’s wife were still alluded to by Anthony Trollope in his 19th century novels. Alas, I have not followed in the esteemed foot-steps of a parson’s wife to any praiseworthy degree whatsoever.

However, the other day, I did accompany Greg on a visit to take communion to a nonagenarian parishioner I'll call Alice.  Rail thin, wearing pressed jeans and a turtleneck, she welcomed us into her kitchen, where there were several comfortable arm chairs. She turned 94 last June, she told me.  She’s like a lot of the farm women around here — hardy, practical, and long-lived.

Before her marriage many years ago, she grew up in the brick house next door and confided that she was surprised she had not ended up further away from her original home.

Her mother sounds like someone she might have wanted to put at a greater distance. When the latter suspected Alice’s cat of making her ill, she told Alice’s husband to shoot it. Which he did. But he didn’t tell Alice until she pestered him to such a degree about her missing cat, that he confessed. She strode across to her mother’s and said she was never to do anything like that ever again.

Alice has a soft spot in her heart for animals, especially cats. She told us how she once fed a stray and when winter came had it sleep in the shed — in a heated bed she made for it. She took my mother’s cat when Mum could no longer keep her, and Kitten lived a charmed life with a cat bed in every room of the house.  She was recently joined by another cat, a huge gentle Persian; its owner had hit it with a hammer, said Alice. His name is Tarzan.

Alas, Kitten predeceased Tarzan, who is now close to 20 years old. Alice was talking about selling her house and living in town this winter but has decided against it, we suspect, because of Tarzan’s care and keeping. She had to drive him to the vet recently; she prefers the vet located about an hour’s drive away.  Yes, she still drives and gets her own groceries. I meant to ask if she still cleans her own house, which was spotless. She did confess that recently she has felt a bit more tired than usual.

She reminisced about her life on the farm. Before the pipeline came through on its way to London with Lake Huron water, she would get up at the crack of dawn in winter and take the axe to the stream behind the house where she would break the ice, so the cows could have their daily drink.  Then she would carry 30-40 buckets of water back to the barn for the calves and other animals, which were too small to walk that far in the ice and snow.

She and her husband farmed 100 acres of land with soybeans as the cash crop and wheat, barley and oats being other crops to feed the cows, if I heard correctly. He worked all day as a carpenter and evenings on the farm. She did other chores on the farm during the day.  For example, after the beans were cut, she would put the rake behind the tractor and put them in rows hoping they would dry in the sun before it rained, which would necessitate raking and turning them all over again to dry.

All but one of the cows were sold for beef. However, that one was used for milking, which apparently it did not enjoy – it once kicked her niece across the barn with apparently no harm done except to her husband’s slippers which, it seemed, got covered In manure. Alice refused to do any milking, as it made her wrists too sore. 

She also insisted on single beds when her husband’s snoring got too much for her. Her mother thought the marriage would come to an end and told her so, whereupon Alice said, with apologies to Greg for having to hear her say this, that she thought her spouse was quite capable of “getting out of bed and walking three feet across the room.” It must have worked for they were married at least 50 years.

After her husband cut himself badly with a chainsaw and the doctor told him he had to slow down, he built an addition on their house so that in retirement, he could watch the hockey on television and look out patio doors to the fields.  Alice found a lovely stained glass window for the east wall — likely a transom from over the front door of a larger home in the area. The house is like Alice — very well-preserved.  She still has a black dial phone which works (not surprisingly, as phones in those days were solidly made), but she answers on a large cordless phone which must be one of the first models.  The décor is deep red with touches of orange and lots of brass and photos of the days when she looked a lot like June Allyson and her husband looked dapper lounging in a beige suit beside his favourite sedan.

Before we had communion, she cleared the kitchen table of a bouquet of silk sunflowers. We sat at the table and enjoyed communion from the BCP, although I was the only one to say all the responses audibly. Alice reads them silently, as she has a chronic cough she is rather self-conscious about. It was a very pleasant service, and Alice said with the three of us there, it felt more like being in church.

Then we drove her down her long curving lane so she could get her mail; she refused the offer of a ride back because, as she said, she needed the exercise. It had been a delightful afternoon.