A Little Death

                                               A Little Death


The world will little note and no one outside of family will long remember but something changed last week. It wasn't catastrophic, horrendous, just sad, just a little death. But even the little ones must be grieved.

By any measure seventy-one years is a long time. My father, Lee, turned 88 the last week of April. The first week of May he sold off the last of his cattle. It signaled an end of an era, he was the last of a long line of Cosby's who farmed and ranched. There are probably other distant cousins in and around Milam County or back south in Tennessee and Alabama, but Lee's, V.C.'s, and Thomas' branch of the tree has no farming or ranching with it now. My granddad, V. C. (Virgil Carter) moved his wife and nine sons from Rosebud to Milford about 1941. They rented a farm and set about living off cotton, maize, corn, a garden, chickens and a few head of cattle. Typical for the day and times. My dad was connected to that rented farm from 1941 to 2013. He helped granddaddy farm it and rented it himself when granddad got too old to farm it. It was sold a few times and was divided up but the owners always kept Dad to manage what was left of it. He quit crop farming about seven years ago but he kept a few head of cattle on the pasture. But it was time. Old tractors to maintain for mowing and hay hauling were costly to keep up. Old pick-ups crawling over ruts that passed for roads won't last forever.  Old legs that used to hold up 230 lbs on a 6'4'' frame and  pin 800 lbs cows against a corral fence to vaccinate them were a bit unsteady on uneven ground now supporting only 185 lbs. Seventy-one years is a long time. It passed too quickly. A direct connection to the land becomes an indirect one and in time even that is broken. A part of Dad died last week and a part of me died too when he told me. Were I wealthy I would have just bought the place just to keep us connected to it. But no Cosby will turn a plow this season. No "he-yaw" called out to drive a cow or calf in the right direction. Just memories, good, hard, lasting memories.

Time and decay bring these "little deaths" to us almost from birth. We die a little at the first bleeding cut our child receives then brace ourselves for more. He changes from a baby to a toddler to a little boy to a young man. This happens in about three days and we wonder how it got away from us. Innocence dies a little each day, hope for everything turning out just right takes a beating in the living of life. We see the death of a loved one, a serious illness, a divorce, a financial struggle and a never ending string of things we do for the last time. The last time you visited Uncle___; the last time you went fishing with _____; the last Thanksgiving with all the family; the last time ....  Life becomes filled with last things, some good, some bad, some sad but all "little deaths" of what once was and what will never be again.

When you live long enough you experience way too many ''little deaths" and the list of last things grows longer than the list of "I'm going to.." How do you keep going? When meaningful, fulfilling things die around you or they are taken from you, what do you do? I'll not try to answer for you. I can only tell you what I did.

I grieved the loss. I remembered and smiled. I remembered and cried. I grieved.

I remembered the Promises. The places and people in our lives give way to time. Time picks them off one by one: the joys, the pleasures, the things we did, the experiences and people of our lives. But the good Lord made promises and they weren't mainly about this world. The Promises of Life: eternal, abundant, joyful where there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order with its little deaths, last things, last times, and death has passed away.There's the Promise of a special place. The old King James bible calls it a mansion in John 14. The Greek meaning is dwelling place, room. In God's promise there is a place, prepared, special that is ours. Neither sales or the passing of time nor the little deaths will take it away. It's the beautiful and ironic language of Revelation 21:4 that promises death itself will pass away.

And I did and will do one more thing.  I will tell the stories of growing up on a farm to my boys and grandchildren. I will tell of adventures on the creek; chopping and hauling cotton; watching mom's strength of mind and practicality and dad's strength of body and relentless (Mom says stubborn) battle against the land he loved, with nature all the time trying to reclaim its fields. With droughts, floods, boll weevils, and 46 cent cotton, Dad lost a few of those battles. The land, nature, and time lost many more battles for 71 years. They will win the last battles. But they will lose the war for a couple of reasons. The Promise of God the Son guarantees it. The memories of children, grandchildren, the history that shaped us and the stories we share will also see to it.


Standing on the promises,
Cos