Suzanne Bardwell
This column about Isabelle White appeared in last week's Gladewater Mirror to honor the memory of her life.
The sky is steel gray. The thunder is rolling. The cold is seeping into my bones. The house across the way is just as dark and cold because the life that filled it left on Feb. 26.
Vivian Isabelle White was on this earth for 98 years and one day. She was in the life of my family for 32 years. From the very day Jim and I moved in, Belle took us under her wing.
She came from Illinois to Texas when her husband, Marion, was brought by R.G. LeTourneau to work as a draftsman/itinerant engineer for his plant. The couple put down roots in East Mountain buying a farm and raising two sons.
Belle knew how to work and didn't comprehend sitting still. Her hands were always busy. Her gnarled fingers crafted quilts, crocheted lacy table decorations and tea towels, made throws, and worked the dirt growing vegetables, mowing the yard with her poodle Punkin', burning brush piles, working, constantly working.
She also was the divinely gifted bonus grandmother for our son Josh. Belle kept him until he started school. She taught him how to climb off the couch, how to cross the road safely, how to love life a little more deeply.
She was an humble woman who underestimated her worth and undervalued the difference that she made in the world. She was deeply loved and will be missed beyond counting.
That is the funny thing about love isn't it? The only way we can do it well is to allow ourselves to be vulnerable to crushing pain. And isn't it worth it? What wonders we know because we love and have been loved, deeply and well.
And so, today, I weep with the sky, and I am so thankful for the life of a woman who made everyone else's life a little better, and her corner of the world a lot brighter, because of the way she chose to live.
I believe with all of my heart that for the first time in her 'life' she knows her value. For she has now heard the powerful words, "Well done, good and faithful servant" from the Origin of all love.
