I like the big rock up there at Brazos del Dios, the flat one under the leaning oak. It’s a comfortable place for me, ’cause when I goes up there, I know Miss Debbie’s up there with me. We dedicated the new cemetery in May, and I was mighty glad to see that God blessed the day with a blue sky and big wide blanket a’ yella flowers as far as you could see. There was about fifty people there, mostly the same ones that had come to the burial back in November. We all sang for a while and spent some time talkin ’bout God’s faithfulness to carry us through this time of grievin.
Then I felt like the Lord had given me a word for the people that was gathered there. And when the Lord say “speak,” ain’t much you can do but get up, open your mouth, and see what comes out.
Here’s what come out that day: “Miss Debbie was a close enough friend a’ mine that I prayed and prayed for her, day and night—even to the point of offerin God life for life. ‘Let me go in,’ I said to Him. ‘Let her stay here, ’cause she more worthy than me to stay here on this earth, and I would be better off to go on up to heaven ’cause I ain’t had no kinda luck down here.’”
But everbody there that day knowed it didn’t turn out that way. So I looked at Mr. Ron and Carson and Regan sittin over on the bench that Miss Pame put in, ’cause I knowed what I was fixin to say was gon’ be hard for them to hear.
“I know when somebody you love is gone, that’s the last time you feel like thanking God. But sometimes we has to be thankful for the things that hurt us,” I said, “’cause sometimes God does things that hurts us but they help somebody else.”
I could see folks noddin their heads. Mr. Ron and them just sat still and quiet.
“If you want to know the truth about it, nothin ever really ends but something new don’t begin,” I said. “When somethin ends in our sight, it begins somewhere else where we can’t hear it or see it or feel it. We live in two worlds—a physical world and a spiritual world. When Miss Debbie’s physical body laid down, her spirit rose up. When we come through this world, we just change form ’fore we go on to the next.”
I looked over at her grave at where Mr. Ron’s ranch hands had tucked some wild roses in an old bucket and set em up by Miss Debbie’s head. Then I looked at Mr. Ron again, and I could see him noddin then. He smiled a little, and I thought maybe he was rememberin that I had seen Miss Debbie’s spiritual body with my own eyes.