Mom and I were traveling north on I-79 earlier this week. It was a beautiful, crisp, fall day. The mountains in West Virginia were a glorious patchwork of deep brown, red, orange, yellow, and green. At times, when the sun was just right, it was almost too beautiful to be real. I’ve always loved this time of year. Growing up in the steep mountains of the southern West Virginia coal fields, I never took the beautiful fall colors for granted…I knew it was only a matter of a few weeks—less if there was any significant wind and rain—before the mountains would give up their colors for dreary gray.
There’s a melancholy in the autumn, too. We know that cold, dark, and gray are just around the corner. If we can hope past the winter, we know there’s a spring that waits to be bursting with fresh new colors.
Dad loved the autumn, too. We would go to Grandma Mitchell’s in Lewis County and gather nuts—hickory nuts, hazel nuts, butternuts, but especially the black walnuts. People can be divided into two categories: those who love black walnuts, and those who hate them. We loved them. My brother and I liked to climb up in the tree and shake the limbs to knock down the walnuts. We laughed at the dirty looks Dad would give us when he would walk under the tree thinking we were finished, only to get pummeled with nuts. It was all part of the game. We wore gloves to keep from staining our hands as we knocked off the outer hulls. Eventually, the stain would bleed through the gloves. Dad would spread the walnuts out on the garage floor to dry. After several days of drying, he would crack several at time with a hammer, and then, sitting in front of the television, begin the painstaking process of picking walnuts out of the shell. No one else had the patience for it. Fortunately, his patience paid off for all of us when we enjoyed the cakes and pies with the delicious unique black walnut flavor.
Dad loved autumn. Mom told me that as she stands at her rear window looking at the fall splendor, she can hear Dad’s voice saying how beautiful it is. She told me she caught herself saying out loud the other day, “I know it’s a lot prettier where you are, honey.”
What a great attitude! What a faith, and a hope in the resurrection! Mom knows and trusts God’s promise that death is not the end, but the beginning of something else, something better. “[H]e will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away. And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’” Revelation 21:4-5.
Oh, when the saints go marching in;Jeff Taylor
Oh, when the saints go marching in!
Oh, Lord I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in!
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