Pew Buddies
She was 99 years old. A beautiful and bright smile met me most every Sunday. I entered the sanctuary with expectation of her presence. There she would sit second row back on the lectern side. She and I were pew buddies. I would enter the sanctuary and place my things in the floor beneath the pew and turn and there she would be sitting. Wise in her years, warm and loving with her smile. Her small and fragile hands bent with the years would lift to grasp mine in a greeting. I would lean down and embrace her, I can still smell the familiar scent that was Miss Pepper. She would at times reach up and place her hands upon my cheeks and look into my face. You knew that she loved you, I knew that she loved me. I will miss her more that words can express. As sometimes happens the flesh is weak, her body failed her and the years began to take there toll. I would enter the sanctuary and find her place empty. Her loved ones would report the changes and decline in heath and mobility that simply mad...