DELMA JANE

My Grandmother isn’t doing too well. She had to be placed in a nursing home right before Christmas. A few years back, after the death of my Grandfather, she gave me some handwritten stories, asking if I’d edit them for her. I never got around to it—until now. I thought I’d share my personal favorite. Here it is:

Once upon a time—as all good stories should start (but this isn’t just a story, this is something that really happened to your Grandfather)—this family living on a farm near Kinde, Michigan in the 1920’s, had six children: Doris, Katherine, Ollie, Roy, Leland, and Delma Jane. Delma Jane was the youngest at 3 months old and she had been very very sick. Roy and Mary, the parents, knew their baby was dying and sheltered their other children as best as they could from the inevitable.

It was a nice day, around 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Roy and Mary told their children to go into the field and bring the cows back for milking. So off the children went down a long lane, through some woods, and into an open field. They gathered the cows and drove them through the woods. But as they entered the lane the cows stopped. The children thought that maybe something had startled the cows. They looked around, but couldn’t see anything. Then, one by one, each child looked up over the fence line. They weren’t sure about what they were witnessing; it looked like a young man with golden hair and a gown; and if so, he didn’t speak.

They prodded the cows to keep moving, which they did, and the person near the fence glided along, keeping pace. As they approached the barn yard to milk the cows, their acquaintance began to fade away. By this time, the children were so excited that they ran to see their mother and father.

When they entered the farm house, they found both of them crying. They learned that poor little Delma Jane had passed. They were too little to understand the permanence of death, or perhaps their anxiousness outweighed their sadness; they wanted to tell their parents about the flying person.

After a brief moment of silence, once their mother and father stopped crying, Doris, Katherine, Ollie, Roy and Leland retold their story, each adding a bit more detail. When they had finished taking turns describing the flying person, their mother and father informed them that God had sent an Angel for Delma Jane; that she had went to Heaven.

This happened a long, long time ago. These children have grown old; some have gone to heaven themselves. But whenever there’s a family get-together, someone always mentions the beautiful Angel and Delma Jane.

-The End-

Merry Christmas everyone!