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The first time I went to their home was for a family Thanksgiving dinner. Actually, it was the midday meal, but down here we used to call that one dinner. Besides, that’s too much food, and much too scrumptious to simply be called “lunch.” I can’t remember if that was the first time I met them, but I believe it was the first of my many visits in their home. I can’t remember too much about that day, since it was so long ago, but it was a Thursday. Okay, so Thanksgiving is always on Thursday. I assume we had turkey and dressing and probably sweet potato something. I do know that we had cherry cream-cheese pie. You know, the kind with a fluffy cream cheese filling on a graham cracker crust and topped with cherry pie filling. That’s when I knew that Aunt Ginnie was a wonderful cook, just like most everyone else in her family. I would quickly realize that she was just as sweet as her cream cheese pies. 

Jean’s Aunt Ginnie and her husband, Bobby, lived in Chattanooga, not far from where Jean spent her childhood years. That was before Jean and her family moved to Alabama…so she could meet me! When she invited me to go with her family to her Aunt Ginnie’s house that Thanksgiving, I saw it as a positive sign of good things to come. I soon came to love all of them, especially Jean. Less than two-years later, Jean was my wife, and they were my aunt and uncle. I can’t begin to tell you how many times after that we visited their home, ate at their table, and they at ours.      

The last time we visited them in their home we took lunch to them. Although Jean did inherit that gift of being a great cook, that day we picked up Zaxby’s chicken. We enjoyed a quiet peaceful visit in the bonus room they had added to the back of their house a few years prior. Their house was built into a hill, so on the second floor, the tops of the trees behind the house were about eye level. Aunt Ginnie loved red cardinals and we watched with delight as several landed in the trees. When we went to visit them three weeks ago, they were no longer living in their house and Aunt Ginnie could not see her backyard cardinals. So, on that final visit, Jean took her a beautiful ceramic cardinal. Some say a cardinal sighting is like seeing a departed loved one. I’ll probably never see another one without thinking about Aunt Ginnie. 

Aunt Ginnie was a senior in high school when she and Uncle Bobby married. She went home for the night with her senior-prom date, but before you go there, her prom date was also her husband. Two days after their 71st wedding anniversary, Uncle Bobby was gone. When he passed away week before last, for the first time since high school, she wasn’t by his side. Without him by her side, I knew she wouldn’t stay here long. Twelve days later, she was gone too. 

Wise Solomon said in the book of Ecclesiastes, “Two are better than one.” He went on to say, “For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up.” Uncle Bobby and Aunt Ginnie had been together, side by side, holding hands, helping each other up and along the way for most of their lives. They were a great example of commitment and love.