The other night I was listening to Gary Morris sing a particular song, and I was reminded
of Ruth. Ruth lived just down the street from my parents and me in the small community where I grew up. All the years I knew her she had been a widow. I was told she had two older sons, but seldom did I ever see or hear of them visiting her.
I’d stop in to check on her most evenings after school. Often I ran errands for her, to the store to pick up milk and bread or I’d carry in some coal for her stove. In the summer I cut her grass for seventy-five cents. She was always very nice and kind to me, and I always wondered about her because she seemed lonely. The words of Morris’s song brought her back into my memory. She was one of those elderly people we see on a regular basis, but she often seemed like she was one of the forgotten people.
“Better Than the New”
She was somebody’s mother, but no one ever bothered to call/
She has sisters and brothers, a picture of her loving husband on the wall/
And she lived in the last house on a dead end street alone for the years I walked
Thru her yard to school/ I guess that’s why she seemed to like the old better than the new
And she lived out of the garden and mended broken fences with his tools/
And I’d help her on the week-ends with what she had to spare and I could do/
I’d mow her yard in the summer time for nothing and kept her a path in the woods
To the church she went to/ cause I knew how she liked to walk the old ways better than the new
Oh, life you’re so cruel to older people/ what do they have to look forward to/
You’re just so cruel to older people/ is it any wonder she gave up believing in you?
I remember her last Christmas, I took her a gift and I shoveled a drift of snow/ and
I could hear thru the window country music on her brand new radio/
And we listened to the year’s sad song and I heard her humming along to a few/ then
I heard her say how she liked the old songs, better than the new
Oh, life you’re so cruel to older people/ what do they have to look forward to/
Your just so cruel to older people/ is it any wonder she gave up believing in you
She was somebody’s mother, but no one ever bothered to call
So true...life can sometimes be so cruel...and in some cases even more so to old folks.
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April 28, 2011
Keep on,
Larry Adamson