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Cheryl Hughes: The Missing Elements

Last week on NPR, I heard an interview with a writer from Eastern Kentucky.  The guy grew up in the kind of poverty and backwardness that sometimes besets the people of that area.  He escaped it because of the influence of his Mamaw and Papaw, he told the interviewer.  He spoke of a “learned helplessness” prevalent among his friends who became stuck in the lifestyle of generations before them.      I saw that “learned helplessness” in the area where I grew up, as well, but I, like the guy on NPR, had the influence of family who were determined to move forward.  I am often inspired by people like that writer, and when I listen to what they have to say, I am also listening for something else.  Anger, bitterness, and unforgiveness, I listen for those things, but I never hear them.  Not in the guy from Eastern Kentucky, not in any interview I have ever heard with a person who truly overcomes a difficulty, and not in the stories of people I have known personally who overcame tremendous obstacles in order to have even ordinary lives.  Anger, bitterness and unforgiveness are the missing elements in strength.
    My friend, Mattie, was one of those people.  She came from a backward, uneducated area of Georgia.  She grew up on a farm, during the thirties, in a family with several children.  By the time she was ten or eleven, it was apparent she had a serious bone disease that would plague her for the rest of her life.  Her parents didn’t have the time nor money to help a child with her problems, so they married her off to an older man when Mattie was just thirteen years old.
    Mattie became pregnant by the age of fifteen and gave birth to a son she adored.  The marriage didn’t last long after that, and Mattie left with her son for the city of Atlanta.  She worked in sewing factories, and waited tables and did what other work was available in order to support herself and her son. 
    WWII was ending, and many U.S. soldiers were returning home.  Mattie met and fell in love with one of those men.  Art and Mattie were married, and it was the beginning of a love affair that would last the rest of their lives.  Art adored Mattie’s son, and the three of them made a life together, settling in Chicago, where they ran a successful re-weaving business until they retired.
    Mattie’s son died when he was in his late thirties as the result of an injury caused by a drunk driver.  Art died from the complications of a stroke.  Mattie lived alone for several years until her death a few years ago. 
    I often talked to her about her life.  I was amazed at the determination and strength of character that got her through so much struggle.  Anger, bitterness and unforgiveness never showed up.  I was listening for them…I would have noticed. 
    She told me that before her mother died, she apologized to Mattie for what Mattie’s father and she had done.  Mattie and Art and Mattie’s mother were all three in the living room of the small house where the couple had retired.  Mattie and Art were holding hands, Mattie’s mother was knitting.  Suddenly, her mother dropped her knitting and said, “Sister, we didn’t do right by you.”
    “Hush,” Mattie said, “We’re not going to talk about that.  I have Art and he has me, and that’s all that matters.”
    I’ve thought about the scene that played out in that living room many times.  Mattie would have been justified in holding on to anger and bitterness and unforgiveness over the wrong that had been done to her when she was thirteen, but Mattie knew the secret of strength.  It is mercy.
    In the book, The Brutal Telling, by Louise Penny, the chief inspector makes the following observation about the past: “Because the present became the past, and the past grew.  And got up and followed you.”  The past will always follow you, it is what the past does.  The challenge is not to follow the past back to where all the hurt and wrongs and suffering took place.    That takes strength.  The kind of strength the writer from Eastern Kentucky has.  The kind of strength my friend, Mattie had.  The kind of strength I hope I have before I leave this earth.

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