Endings and beginnings

© 2012 Lydia Hinshaw

Waiting for Billy under the longleaf pines

The seventh generation has arrived in the house

 WEST END, NC -- On the weekend we gathered to bury our family's oldest member, I got to see our newest as well.

 My cousin Billy was 95, and had posted big numbers on life's scoreboard.  He was married to Lois for 71 years.  They raised four fine children, who were among my childhood playmates.  He served in Europe in World War II and came home to become a successful businessman, a pillar of community and church, living all his life this small Sandhills community.

 He was a devoted nephew to my late grandmother.  He and Lois visited her daily for years, delivering her mail and reading it to her after her eyesight failed.  They helped make it possible for her to live alone in her big old house until her 97th year.

 I liked visiting their home and hearing the stories Billy could tell about things that happened in town as far back as the 1920s, as well as his accounts of current local events.  Though his own eyesight had failed, he always knew what was going on around town.

 In the past couple of years, his sharp memory and his health were unmistakably failing. Last Thursday we lost him.

 And so Friday morning I found myself headed north on I-95.  It's almost exactly 500 miles to my grandmother's driveway.  It will always be our grandmother's driveway, although it is now owned by my first cousin Katherine and her husband Ed, who are repairing and restoring it to be a new version of the family seat it has been since 1903.

 It has been a huge job, and it is still in progress, but there was comfortable overnight space for 10 of us this weekend.

 Among the guests was Teddy, at 14 weeks, the youngest of the four members of our latest generation.

 Now that his grandparents own the house, he will grow up visiting and enjoying the house where his great, great, great, great grandparents, if I've counted right, once lived. That's high-caliber longevity for this day and age.