My Mama’s Hands
by Lana Ruth Turner Ellis

As I sit beside her hospital bed and watch her ever so slowly drawing what could be her last breath, I hold her hand in mine, rubbing each finger individually. Tonight, her hands are swollen from excess fluid and turning to a deep purple color. Ninety­ five years ago these same fingers were five months old and could curl around one of her mother's fingers. As the young girl grew, her fingers would soon be making melodies on the keys of a piano. These fingers would later take the last exam in high school and proceed on to a year of college acquiring a teacher's certificate. Then the hands of the trim, attractive young schoolteacher would move the chalk in a perfectly scripted handwriting across the black board in a one-room school.

After a couple of years one of the fingers on the left hand would proudly wear a golden band. Soon these same fingers felt the tender touch of her first newborn, followed by five more over the years. It was then that the hands and fingers really began to labor- diaper changing, food preparation, bathing, dressing and redressing. Day after day the hands grew more calloused and stronger due to the responsibilities of being not only a wife and mother but also farmer, mail carrier and pianist. The same fingers that could strip a tobacco stalk, grade it and tie it in the morning would be playing a beautiful soft melody on the piano that night. All of this, of course, while wiping runny noses, cleaning up spills, running clothes through the washer wringer, hanging them on the garden fence, ripping up a rag to bandage a bleeding knee and cooking for work hands coming in from the wheat and hay fields.

There was always time for the many church mission projects, teaching children's classes and visiting shut ins. Entertaining her church family on the farm with picnics and wagon rides to the creek was like a holiday for her. She spent hours sweeping trails through the adjoining woods tagging different trees and items with humorous notes that entertained several generations over the years. Later in life, after six children were raised, the fingers found a favorite pastime - writing countless greeting cards filling them so full that the words would be continued around the margins of the paper. In every birthday greeting the fingers would place in the envelope a balloon on which she had written "Happy Birthday".

Now after ninety-five years and five months her hands are resting quietly on a pillow.They have encouraged many with pats on the back, handshakes and countless letters of encouragement. Every night for years her hands were folded together as she knelt at the foot of her bed and prayed, calling out the names of every member of her growing family. Now there is only one more thing left for her hands to do. It won't be long now that these hands will reach up and remove the extra bejeweled crown from her head and lay it at the feet of her Savior. Well done thy good and faithful hands.

(In memory of my mother, Ruth Turner, who met Jesus four days after this was written.)
Lana