Old Mill as Cathedral

You want to know how I’ve come to live such a long life – you want to know my secret? I’m not granting interviews this year. This statement will have to suffice.

Yes, I was born in 1894, near the Old Mill. Augusta County has always been my home. On the twenty-third anniversary of my birth, June 23, 1917, I celebrated my wedding day. No time to wait for the formal ceremony slated for October at the Augusta Stone Church, I was married at the Old Mill instead, but not in the traditional sense.

The Old Mill served as Cathedral in emerald setting, but there were no witnesses, save those of the natural world standing for us. Fresh-picked blossoms with greenery for bridal bouquet. Ray of sun for candlelight. Birdsong for wedding march. Rustle of greenwillow-boughs whispering like wedding guests as I made my way up the pebbled path of the Old Mill to my waiting Beloved, blue of eye. I accepted joyfully the thin gold band, like grasping brass ring of carousel, I was the luckiest girl in the world - the most beautiful, the most treasured. I pledged him my life - he pledged me his unending love. Not his undying love. Would I the choice, my legacy would be to change the very lexicon of this land, eliminating all forms of the word death. Did Jesus die for us? No, I tell you, he lived for us, setting the perfect pattern for mankind. The expansive green grass lawn of the Old Mill was our reception hall as twilight approached. And the Old Mill itself transformed yet again from Cathedral to honeymoon-suite haven as we loved at the mill, danced at the mill, loving and dancing on our wedding night, in every sense of the words.

My Beloved left the next morning, called to duty in service of our country. That call to duty had been the very impetus for our hasty, impulsive decision to secretly wed in ceremony of our own making.

Daybreak of March 23, I welcomed with heart only the one born of our Old Mill tryst, for my arms were denied the precious one they would eagerly hold, even a momentary vision was denied me. I know not if they wrapped my little one in rose-floral flannel or dusty blue. Word was received that morning that my Beloved was called to heaven by the very flu that kept him busy stateside, burying his fellow East Coast servicemen. The same flu that had kept me from him, as quarantine was declared. My Beloved had signed on to fight the good fight in what was known as the Great War, but was defeated by what was to become known as the Great Flu of 1918. My Beloved and my Babe were gone from me in a one-day mystic-cruel twist of fate. My little one taken, and those that did the taking are lost to me and I to them in every sense of the word, lost permanently, lost completely, lost.

I put my fiddle down that day, didn’t play, couldn’t play, would that I tried. I didn’t speak, couldn’t speak, for three years, would that I tried. And yet I accepted no guilt, rejected the shame. Judge me not, for I have paid the highest price for being true to myself and to my Beloved.

Just one woman I could rely on throughout determined to care for me in every sense of the word, her devoted friendship to me willed through generations of daughters that care for me still. She willed me their friendship, their friendship is willing, to this day.

Do you still want to know how I’ve come to live such a long life? Do you still want to know my secret? Two things and two things only, I tell you. The wondering, the endless wondering, had been my baby blue of eye? And the remembrance of green on my wedding day.