Sovilla

Sovilla was my mother-in-law. To Clara and I she was always "Mom." To our children she was "Granny Mast." Mom was born in 1908 and she died Jan. 1, 2004.

Sovilla was a pretty amazing woman. Mom gave birth to nine babies, seven of which lived to adulthood. These children grew up in a house that had what I would call 2 1/2 bedrooms upstairs and one down. The children were all given work assignments and all contributed in some way to the needs of the household. Supervising and disciplining took a pretty capable woman, wouldn't you say? Of course Pop was there to assist when he needed to.

As with most older folks, Mom forgot some things in her later years. But there were some things she didn't forget until the final weeks of her life. For one thing, in her youth she had learned Bible verses that began with the first letter of the alphabet. She spent the last year of her life in a nursing home, and still in that year she could repeat most of the verses in order, sometimes without any prompting. At one point she would say the verses while waiting for a meal in the dining room. Someone accused her of "preaching."

Another thing she learned in grammar school (she quit school during grade 6) was the poem above with the picture of a primrose. We used to like to hear her repeat this short poem without batting an eye. The primrose poem sort of became "her thing," to the point that after she died we had the above card printed which we placed on her casket. We asked the funeral director for primroses for her casket, but they were not available, so we used yellow roses instead.

Today we have a very nice yellow primrose next to our patio in back. This plant is flourishing very nicely this spring with many beautiful flowers. It not only reminds us of Mom and her poem, but of the beautiful person she was. And of course it adds to the beauty of our patio, along with the other beautiful flowers we have there.

I'm reminded as I finish this of a song we have on one of our CD's written and sung by Jim Croggert, entitled, "Why do I hunger for beauty?" Beautiful flowers certainly add to our life's enjoyment here where we live.

Pilgrim on the way