Farewell, Miss Barbara

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home yesterday to pick up a couple of things.

The store, part of a small, local chain, sits at the foot of a mountain next to a bank, a gas station, and a fast food joint. The adjoining mountain is part of the store’s charm; in all weathers, the sheer slope with its trees and crags rises up in a dramatic sweep when one steps out of the store to return to one’s vehicle. The mountain looks almost like a dormant volcano, with its near-perfect cone shape and its accompanying sense of looming and watching. Waiting. Patient as a jove.

When I entered the store, I headed to the aisles where I knew I’d find my stuff, and I passed the tiny cafe next to the deli and hot-bar, where locals eat or take home such dishes as meatloaf, mashed potatoes, fried chicken, ribs, hot yeast rolls, fried catfish, macaroni & cheese, and various cobblers. The cafe area was crowded and noisy, and I noticed that the group consisted almost entirely of employees. I saw her then in the middle of the group — Miss Barbara. She was standing next to a small table and on the table was a sheet cake with words in icing on it. Miss Barbara was laughing and talking, and employees were lining up to speak to her and to hug her. I suspected a certain thing.

I went on and picked up the items for which I’d come, and then I swung back past the cafe. The crowd was thinning out, and I made my way to Miss Barbara and said her name. She turned to me, recognized me, and said, “Way-ull, hello there!” in her trembly, friendly voice.

I looked down at the cake and my suspicions were confirmed. Happy Retirement read the words iced there.

“You’re retiring?” I asked, and she nodded. “When is your last day?”

She pointed to the watch on her wrist. “Today. Right now. I’m goin’ home right now.”

I told her how sad I was to see her go, and how disappointed my wife would be when I gave her the news. Miss Barbara’s clear blue eyes filled with tears and she said, “Oh, y’all have always been so nice to me.”

I told her that we would miss seeing her, and Miss Barbara said that she would still do her shopping at the store and that we would likely see her sometimes. I asked if I could hug her, and she threw her arms around me and squeezed good and strong, and then I left her to her admirers and went to check out with someone who was not Miss Barbara.

We met her many years ago when we bought our house. Impressed by her friendliness and patience, we always went to her checkout lane whenever possible. Through the years, we talked with her enough to learn a bit about her life, small exchanges in the indirect way of mountain folk. We learned that Miss Barbara was married to a man who was wheelchair-bound, and she took care of him alone. They lived in an old single-wide trailer, and they had a (probably unsafe) old coal stove for heat in the wintertime. “It’s dirty heat, but it’s good heat. Warms your bones,” she would say. She talked of her grandchildren and their activities. We almost always talked about the weather, about the seasons and holidays, about how rude and impatient people in public places can be. If my wife went to the store without me, Miss Barbara asked where I was. If I went without my wife, Miss Barbara asked where she was. Just her way.

She was just one of those little mountain mamaws, slow talking and slow moving, with that motherly air of nurturing and watchfulness that such women possess. She was a part of our regular life rhythm, and now she has passed out of it, perhaps forever, unless we happen to see her shopping at the store where she stood at Checkout #3 for forty years, footsore and feeling the outside weather come in with the customers.

May the rest of your life be easy and joyous, Miss Barbara. We’ll miss you. You were a rustic, lyrical poem in a smock, an oasis of grace in a world that has no use for you and your kind. May the rest of your days be full of quiet and sweet peace.

~ S.K. Orr