A Ball Made of Rags
by CE Wills
copyright 2010 all rights reserved
published by Smashwords, Inc.
Author's note:This story, based on true events, was related to me by a friend who is a minister. I have tried to write it down as it was told to me.
One day I was walking through a graveyard. It was a beautiful, sunny spring day. The graveyard was on a grassy hillside, quite steep, sprinkled with a few hardwood trees. At the foot of the hill was a church. The church was white, with a steeple, and was probably fifty years old.
I was there to visit my dad's grave, to make sure it was cleaned off and tidy and there were no weeds on it. I didn't really come that often but it somehow felt right to do so, like after you go to church or to the dentist.
As I was leaving I saw an elderly man not far away, just a few graves, really. He sat on one headstone and looked at another one in front of him. On the headstone before him he had placed a ball, about the size of a baseball. It was a most unusual ball. It was made of rags. The rags had been cut in narrow strips, all different colors, like the old-timey quilts I remembered from my youth.
The old man was probably sixty and I hated to intrude on his grief. He had a few tears on his cheeks, even though the gravestone was very old and his grief could hardly have been fresh. My curiosity overcame my good manners and I stopped beside him.
"Excuse me, sir, for intruding on what's obviously a private moment, but I'm curious about that rag ball lying there."
His eyes turned to my face, returning from somewhere far away and long ago, perhaps.
"Yes, I can see where you might find it curious, so I'll tell you a story."
"The woman whose bones lie in the cold ground yonder was my grandmother. When I was little, we'd go to her place in the country, not many miles from here. She'd take us for walks, berry picking, stuff like that. She was poor and her husband was dead, but she was so sweet to me and I adored her."
"Granny was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian and I suppose she had learned to make a ball from rags out of necessity. No money for such things as toys back in her younger days, I'm sure. She made a ball tight enough where we could even bat it with an old piece of board and it wouldn't unravel."
He wiped his face on his sleeve and continued. "I liked to throw the rag ball onto the old tin roof of her house and catch it when it rolled back down. I had to be careful that it didn't fall in the rain barrel they kept under the corner of the roof. She liked to wash her hair in the rainwater and her clothes too, maybe. They had a well, of course, for other needs."
"Years later, I was grown with kids of my own. Granny was in the hospital, dying, and sent word to me that I should come see her. I didn't go for various reasons, I guess. Mainly because that stuff is rough emotionally and I'm embarrassed to cry in front of folks. I always felt bad about the fact that I didn't go. So I made her this ball, as best I could. Probably not wrapped tight enough, nor made with as much love. I know I'd give $10,000 dollars for the one she gave me if I could have it now."
By this time tears were running down my face too. He blew his nose on a snow-white handkerchief and remarked, "I always wondered what she wanted to say to me that day long ago at the hospital."
I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and said, "I think I can tell you. She wanted to say she loved you. She wanted to say you'd see her again someday, if you don't lose your way."
I turned and walked away, leaving him to the quietness and the contemplation of the place and the moment and the rag ball on the grave.
That night at church I told the congregation the story about a loving grandmother, a ball made out of strips of rags and how things done with love could shed light upon our path. I used as a text 1 Corinthians Chapter 13, verse 13. The greatest gift is love. The people seemed touched, perhaps remembering their own grandmothers, and several people came to the altar to pray.
That night in peaceful sleep I dreamed of a dark-skinned granny tossing a ball back and forth with a little boy. It was the best sleep I had experienced in years.
The End ****
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