Something about a southern girl
Make me feel right
In a Mississippi morning
She’s an angel in flight
In a blink of an eye
She’ll be out of your sight
Something about a southern girl – Southern Girl, Amos Lee
I walked out of the neighborhood church I had known since my childhood and squinted in the bright, late November sun as the people dressed in black came out from the sanctuary. I hoped to get close to Patti, to hug her and tell her I was sorry about the passing of her mom, Marion “Mickey” Roberts, but the line was getting longer and my time was short. Oh well, hugs never go bad.
I saw James Dietz and said to him that the only time I ever got back to the church anymore was during one of these, remembering this past May when I’d been there for Mom. Those six months had passed like hours to me.
Dietz said, “Does that tell you we’re getting older?”
Yes.
During the service, the Reverend Richard Lancaster said Mickey had been a woman who believed in prayer, “and when Patti was going through a difficult pregnancy with Katie, Mickey said to God, ‘This is my baby’s baby we’re talking about here.’”
The story reminded me of a day at North Hills, when Patti’s husband Jim told us she was pregnant. That was over a quarter century ago, and while the pregnancy was indeed tough, it worked out as we all hoped. God had apparently listened to Katie’s grandmother.
I would see Mickey now and then, not often, but at least once a year at Patti and Jim’s traditional Christmas Eve Eve party. “How you dooooin’ darlin’?” She would ask me with that great raspy drawl that only southern women are blessed with. She’d grin and hug me tight and for a few moments, cliché or not, all seemed right with the world.
“Mickey you never change,” I would tell her, meaning every word of it. She would laugh that great laugh of hers and then begin telling me some story.
At the service, after the opening hymn and prayer, daughter Debra was called on and made her way up on the altar. As she walked I thought, ‘how can she do this?’ Remembering that I could barely get a sentence out without crying when Mom died.
Debra began while fighting back the tears, “I went to a funeral with mother not long ago and one of the children got up to speak. I said to mom after, ‘I don’t know how they were able to get through that, I could never do that.’
‘What do you mean?’ mom asked me.
‘I mean, I could never speak at your funeral, it would be too difficult.’
She thought a moment and said in that way of hers that only she had, ‘Well……. I would expect you to.’”
Debra went on with more stories, reminding us all why we were drawn to Mickey in the first place.
She finished and I looked around at familiar faces in the old church. I was reminded of all those southern North Little Rock women who had been such a force in so many of our lives. Women like Ruth and Wanda and Pat and Sylvia and Betty and Clarice and Louise.
And Mickey.
And Jean.
Debra came through like a champ, as southern women will. Her mom likely expected just that. And the memories she recalled so well gave us all what we had really been hoping for that day, just a few more minutes with Mickey.