I’ve been packing books. If I hurry up and get them boxed up, I can give them to Sojourner Truth Library for the benefit book sale that starts next week. Last night, as I was filling boxes, I noticed that I had used a note card for a bookmark in one. It turned out to be a note from Edna Tyldsley, my old friend at Grace Church, who died a couple of years ago. The note was dated January 28, 2001, and both inside panels and part of the back were filled with Edna’s tiny, clear script. She talked about the Annual Meeting at Grace, and how she had used my carrot cake recipe for the pot luck. It was a sweet, newsy, sisterly missive. I laid it on the table with my prayer book as a reminder to myself to pray particularly for Edna today.

If I ever had a role model (as much as I detest that trite term!) it was Edna. She was brave and dignified and kind, smart and cheerful and industrious. She loved children and gardens and good fresh things from the Millbrook Farmers’ Market. I remember when Dylan started kindergarten, weighing all of 40 pounds, so tiny she needed a boost onto the bottom step of the school bus, I was a wreck. Edna reassured me gently, noting that the whole separation was much harder for me than it was for Dylan. She was right, of course. A few years later, I had become very good at feeling sorry for myself, a single mom on an extreme austerity budget. One Saturday morning I was feeling especially put upon as I drove away from the landfill, my boots and car doors slathered with muck. Other people, I groused, could hire someone to pick up the garbage, but I, “poor little me”, had to wallow in mud at the landfill. On the lane leading away from the dump, I passed Edna on her way in, jauntily steering her familiar Toyota station wagon, snowy head held high. There goes Edna, I reflected. She has probably been doing this every Saturday morning for decades. (I knew that she had been a young widow and had raised her children alone.) She has too much faith, good humor and common sense to let this stuff bring her down. I must try to be more like her, I thought. And I did try.

Rest eternal grant to Edna, oh Lord;
Let light perpetual shine upon her.

May her soul and the souls of all the departed,
Through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.