Lives Between the Dimensions

WHO WILL REMEMBER? Cherish the Storytellers When the giggles and whispers of the teen-age girls at the spring house with their milk jars become but an echo and rhapsody of fable… Who will remember? When the grave of a grandfather without a marker--- save for the stone gathered from the oak and hickory clad hill--- is covered by the humus of the decomposing garment of summer majesty… Who will remember? When the loving hands of a father fashioning a marker of concrete in the shadows of a barn for the tiny corpse of his infant son-- are stilled, and the tears but ancient vapor in the winter mists… Who will remember? When backward glances from wagons and ancient truck windows say goodbye to land owned since Delaware and Shawnee Indians were neighbors and elk and bear denizens of the deep forests;  fathers and mothers and children and blood kin by the hundreds, original pioneers of the land, buried in the rocky hillsides… Who will remember? When the old swimming ho...

  For Pam, Dan, and Mike Foreword My Aunt Marie, sister to my mother Iva Delores (Dee) Wilson Ragan, was born July 11, 1916 to Clarence Madison Wilson and Bessie Edith Moore Wilson near the now ghost town of Ojibway in Wayne County, Missouri.  More correctly, she was born in what was known as the Moore Community. Her formative years were not easy.  She was born with polio and endured a number of operations at Shriner's Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, a condition that left her with a slight limp in her adult years, but in no way detracted from her attractiveness as she reached adulthood.  She was a pretty woman, and her disease and pain did not define her. Her voice was deep and raspy, her demeanor always pleasant when I was around, in spite of trials and tribulations in her personal life.  She was warm, deeply religious and always proud of her children and extended family.  My mother used to drive frequently from our home in Paducah, Kentucky to vi...