HILLSPEAKING
from The Anglican Digest
ADVENT/CHRISTMAS/EPIPHANY A.D. 2004
OVER the years, “Hillspeaking” has become something of a
personal letter from me to those of the TAD family who care to read
it. On the whole, it has had no ax to grind, no
particular theological or political point of view. If there has
been a unifying theme at all, it
would simply be Hillspeak.
In the almost thirty
years that I have been writing it, I have written about the birds and
the bees
and butterflies; about shrubs and trees and flowers; about the Twin
Barns and
the houses and other buildings here on Grindstone Mountain; about cats
and dogs
and wild “critters”; about hawks and robins and cardinals and other
birds; and
about Patient Wife.
This “Hillspeaking”
is about Patient Wife.
Margaret Elizabeth
Dutill Swindells joined her Maker this past summer and her body is laid
to rest
in St Mark’s Cemetery here at Hillspeak where she wanted to be.
The service was the simple Burial Office of
the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and started with “I am the resurrection
and the
life,” and ended with the “sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.”
Patient Wife
believed implicitly in both those phrases.
Her faith was simple, strong and real.
She died just three
weeks short of our 63rd wedding anniversary, but we had known each
other for
almost three-quarters of a century, having met in the fourth grade in a
country
school in Florida. After we were married
she followed patiently wherever the Marine Corps and subsequent jobs
sent me,
and when she couldn’t, she stayed at home and raised four fine children.
I first knew her as
a red-headed, freckle-faced tom-boy; I came to know a strong-willed but
gracious woman who embodied what true feminism ought to be. She
was Woman — and for that, I am very
grateful.
Walter R. Swindells
©SPEAK, INC
805 CR 102 - EUREKA SPRINGS AR 72632-9705
PHONE: 479-253-9701
FAX:
479-253-1277 E-MAIL: speak@speakinc.org
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