Memories_Part_1_page

"On occasions like this in which we are now engaged a minister is often called upon to render verbal service when all our feelings seem to impose silence rather than call for words. In this spirit I approach the duties of this hour. We come together today at the call of death. His strokes fall alike on the feeble and the strong and valiant, the young and the aged."

"Today, however, we honor the memory of a mother who had a full life, living long beyond the traditional three-score year and ten. But there is more we can say." "The days of her years was a constant walk with God. And she was also a mother, with a mother's interest, a mother's cares and a mother's loves. We see her standing by her husband in every conflict-calm, patient, loving, trustful, heroic. We recall her persistent tenderness in the way she trained her children in the nurture and admonition of the Christian life."

"In spite of our grief, we need to pin our thoughts not upon our loss but rather upon her gain. Indeed for us who are Christian, even through our tears, we can rejoice with her in victory."
"Remember the story of Enoch, the man of God, of whom the scriptures say, 'He walked with God, and he was not, for God took him?' How simple and beautiful that is! But that is the true picture of death. It is a release from the pain and fatigue of this life."

"Death, my friends, is the freedom of the spirit that moves within this earthly shell waiting to emerge into the light and liberty of eternity." "If we go to her grave and weep, a voice will be heard ringing down the ages, 'Why seek ye the living among the dead? She is not here, she is risen." "Mother Ballengee did not die. God just took her." "We mustn't make a chore of death. It is as simple as when 'One wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."1

The notebook contains many other letters. Here is one more, then, I will continue with my grandfather Ballengee's place in human history.

                                                           "The Realty of Dying

                                                        After all, what is Death?
                                                        We stand upon the shore of a great ocean;
                                                        A ship sets her white sails to the breeze and sails away.
                                                        She is an object of beauty and strength.
                                                        We watch her until at last she hangs like a speck of white
                                                        cloud, Just where the sky and sea come down to
                                                        mingle with each other.
                                                Then someone says, "There! She's gone!"

                                                         Gone where? Gone only from our sight, that is all.
                                                         She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as when she
                                                         left the shore. Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
                                                         And just at that moment when someone at my side says
                                                        "There! She's Gone!" There are other eyes watching
                                                          her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad
                                               shout. "There she comes!

                                                   And that, my friends, is death."1

Long Lane is in Dallas County, Missouri; 12 miles east of Buffalo, Mo., which is, located 40 miles north of Springfield, the capital. Buffalo is the largest town in the United States without a railroad. "The old court house was rebuilt soon after the Civil War (The Union forces having burned the original). . .."1 The Thomas Sterling Ballengee family lived in that area until the early 1900s when the family moved near Lone Wolf, Oklahoma. It was there they farmed for many years and their daughters Aunts (Anna) Nora Ann, Laura and my mother, Ollie Elizabeth, met and married their husbands. Aunt (Basha) Basheba died January 8, 1919, 11 years before I was born. Their brother, my uncle William moved to Taft, California where he farmed the remainder of his life.

I last talked with my grandfather, Thomas Sterling Ballengee, in 1938. I would have been 10 years old, and he 84. I didn't think anything about it at the time, but he would have been 10 years old when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. How time marches on.