On a cold win­ter day, our Hud­son pitched and rolled over a rut­ted red-clay road and stopped in front of giant box­wood bush­es flank­ing a brick walk­way. Dad cut the engine and we sat star­ing at a big old two-sto­ry farmhouse.

“How bad off is he?” Mom said.

“They had to move his bed down to the par­lor,” Dad said. “He’s too weak to climb the stairs to the bedroom.”

“You think he’ll get well this time?”

“I don’t know.”

Sit­ting in the back seat, I hung on every word. One of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries is walk­ing with Dad and Great-grand­dad­dy through a mowed corn­field on a sun­ny fall day, dried corn husks crunch­ing under our tread. In his late twen­ties wear­ing a mus­tard-col­ored hunt­ing jack­et, Dad car­ried a shot­gun for bird hunt­ing. Great-grand­dad­dy was five-eight with a full head of snow-white hair and a han­dle­bar mous­tache, his back straight, his stom­ach flat. When we came to a three-rail fence, Dad climbed over it and reached back to lift me across. When he set me down, I looked up to see Great-grand­dad­dy jump off the top rail, land on his feet, and stride on ahead of us. Dad smiled. “Your Great-grand­dad­dy is one tough old boy,” he said to me. “Eighty-eight and strong as a horse.”

My great-grand­par­ents owned a tobac­co farm out­side Appo­mat­tox a cou­ple miles from Lee’s sur­ren­der to Grant at the home of Wilmer McLean, who had moved his fam­i­ly south to escape the Civ­il War when the Union Army shelled his farm in north­ern Vir­ginia in 1861 at the begin­ning of the con­flict, only to have the Yan­kees seize his Appo­mat­tox home for Gen­er­al Grant’s head­quar­ters in 1865 at the end of it.

Snap­shot mem­o­ries of our vis­its to my great-grand­par­ents’ farm have stayed with me through the years. Sleep­ing in a big feath­er bed, feed­ing chick­ens and gath­er­ing eggs with Great-grand­ma, a bro­ken-down Mod­el A Ford squat­ting in a spi­der-webbed cor­ner of a shed, a snake’s skin nailed to the weath­ered planks of an old barn, ele­phant-ear-sized tobac­co leaves hang­ing from its rafters, a tall coal-black horse feed­ing on hay in his stall.

In my mind’s eye, I can still see Great-grand­dad­dy dressed in a three-piece black suit sit­ting tall in the sad­dle on that big roan. I remem­ber him walk­ing me up the porch steps, his cal­loused hand grip­ping my hand so tight­ly it was all I could do not to cry out in pain. Also embla­zoned in my mem­o­ry is the time he met us at the foot of the steps when we arrived, picked me up like I weighed noth­ing, held me in his arms, and looked at me grave­ly. “Ken­neth William Oder,” he said in a grav­el­ly voice.

In a pho­to­graph Mom took in 1947 when I was four months old, Dad is seat­ed in a chair hold­ing me. Behind him stand my Grand­dad­dy and my Great-grand­dad­dy. Dad and Grand­dad­dy are smil­ing. Great-granddaddy’s expres­sion is stern, the same grave look he gave me a few years lat­er when he picked me up and said my full name. On the back of the pho­to Mom wrote, “Oder fam­i­ly, 4 gen­er­a­tions.” Look­ing back on it now with the per­spec­tive of age, I think his expres­sion con­veyed pride, pride in head­ing up the family’s four gen­er­a­tions and pride in me, not because of any­thing I’d done, but sim­ply because I exist­ed, a great-grand­son he’d lived long enough to hold in his arms.

We lived near York­town in those days. The trip from our house to Appo­mat­tox trav­eled over wind­ing coun­try back roads. The rides were long and bor­ing for me, but when Dad talked to Mom about Great-grand­dad­dy, I perked up.

He had lived on the Appo­mat­tox farm all his life, Dad said. His father was a wheel­wright in Lynch­burg when he met Ari­an­na Cheatham. They mar­ried, bought the nine­ty-acre farm, and raised six sons on it. Great-grand­dad­dy was the third son, born in 1862 dur­ing the Civ­il War. His broth­ers left the farm when they grew up, but he stayed on. After his father’s death, he bought out their inher­it­ed inter­ests, mar­ried Lizzie Cole­man, a daugh­ter of the Coun­ty Sher­iff, and they farmed the land for the next half-century.

Dad told sto­ries about Great-granddaddy’s strength and fear­less­ness. He once killed a cop­per­head by pick­ing it up by its tail and crack­ing it like a whip. He walked tire­less­ly behind a horse plow­ing fields from sunup to sun­down. He tossed around bales of hay like they were match­box­es and lift­ed stalks of tobac­co like they were lit­tle twigs. He nev­er drank a drop of liquor; he nev­er smoked a cig­a­rette; and he went to church every Sunday.

Some­where along the way, the old man became an icon­ic hero in my tod­dler mind. He was invin­ci­ble, I thought. He’d live to be 100. Maybe even older.

So, when we sat in our Hud­son star­ing at the old farm­house that cold morn­ing, I knew Great-grand­dad­dy would get well, despite what Dad said.

When we walked in the par­lor, Great-grand­dad­dy sat in a rock­er in front of a big bed, wear­ing long-john under­wear and mud­dy black work boots with a shawl draped across his shoul­ders. His face was pale; his eyes rheumy.

Dad leaned over and hugged him. “You look good, Granddaddy!”

Mom kissed him on the fore­head and laughed. “You look mighty fine. I bet you been actin’ like you’re sick just to get attention!”

He didn’t respond to Mom and Dad. He didn’t smile. He didn’t return their hugs. I touched his knee, but he didn’t look at me.

Mom and Dad sat in straight-backed cane chairs near the wood­stove. I sat in a lit­tle rock­ing chair between them. Great-grand­ma sat next to the old man. She apol­o­gized for his appear­ance. She said he’d want­ed to put on his Sun­day go-to-church suit before we came, but he wasn’t strong enough to pull on his pants and she couldn’t man­age dress­ing him by her­self. It took all her strength just to help him out of bed to the rock­ing chair.

While she talked, I stared hard at Great-grand­dad­dy. He wheezed with every labored breath, his shoul­ders slumped, his eyes downcast.

“He tries to get up on his feet,” Great-grand­ma said, “but he can’t do no good. He can’t walk. Can’t take a step.”

As she spoke, Great-grand­dad­dy raised his head and looked at me. A slight smile lift­ed the cor­ners of his snow-white moustache.

I recall only dis­joint­ed images of what hap­pened after that, but Mom remem­bered every detail and told the sto­ry every chance she got.

I walked over to the old man. “It’s not true you can’t walk. You’re my Great-grand­dad­dy. You can do any­thing.” I grabbed the fin­gers of his big rough hand with both my hands and pulled on him. “Come on, Great-grand­dad­dy! Get up! You can walk! I know you can!”

Grunt­ing and strain­ing against his weight, I pulled as hard as I could. “Stand up, Great-grand­dad­dy!” He leaned for­ward uncer­tain­ly, tried to stand, but fell back. I pulled hard­er. He rocked his chair for­ward, swung his head out over his knees, and stood up slow­ly and unsteadily.

I tugged him toward the oppo­site wall. He took a fal­ter­ing step, right­ed him­self, and took anoth­er. And anoth­er. We made it across the room. I turned and pulled him back toward Great-grand­ma. He stag­gered along behind me. When we got to her, I turned and pulled him toward the oppo­site wall again. Halfway across I broke into a run. He shuf­fled along to keep up with me, his boots clomp­ing on the plank floor. We ran back and forth three or four times before I final­ly tired out and let go of him.

He col­lapsed in the rock­er, gasp­ing for air, every breath rat­tling in his chest like mar­bles bang­ing around inside a tin can.

I jumped up and down in front of him, cheer­ing. “I knew you could do it, Great-grand­dad­dy! I knew you could do it!”

He looked at me with big tears rolling down his cheeks and that slight smile fight­ing its way through.

He got well short­ly after our visit.

It wasn’t part of Mom’s sto­ry, but I remem­ber Great-grand­ma star­ing at me wide-eyed that day. She was a woman of faith. She believed God had worked a heal­ing mir­a­cle through me. Mom thought so, too.

When I was a lit­tle boy, I didn’t think it was a mir­a­cle. I believed Great-grandad­dy could do any­thing, so I wasn’t sur­prised when he stood and walked, but as I lis­tened to Mom tell the sto­ry over the years, I came to real­ize it was, at a min­i­mum, a mir­a­cle of courage, rock-hard grit, and indomitabil­i­ty. Run­ning across that room almost killed him, but he refused to let me down no mat­ter what it cost him.

He wasn’t invin­ci­ble. He didn’t make it to 100. He died of heart fail­ure at 92. No one can beat time for­ev­er, but he sure-to-God gave old age a good long hard fight.

Thomas William Oder (1862–1954). My Great-grand­dad­dy. A strong man of good char­ac­ter and iron will. A role mod­el for a wor­ship­ful tod­dler. One tough old boy.

One morn­ing a cou­ple of days before my 74^th birth­day, I stepped on some­thing par­tial­ly buried in the dirt in my horse cor­ral. I picked it up and turned it over in my hand. A porce­lain round wafer the size of a lol­lipop mount­ed on a five-inch-long met­al rod. Etched in black let­ters on its off-white sur­face: “NOT DEAD YET.”

I don’t know the sto­ry behind its wry mes­sage, who lost it in the cor­ral, or what its intend­ed pur­pose may have been, but its serendip­i­tous dis­cov­ery right before a high-num­bered birth­day seemed a good omen.

I took it home, staked it in the cen­ter of a saucer-sized pie, and post­ed a pho­to of it on Face­book under the com­ment, “Birth­days at this age are fun, ain’t they?”

It seemed to hit a chord, espe­cial­ly with the “mature” crowd, gar­ner­ing a bunch of likes and birth­day wish­es. Some weren’t so encour­ag­ing. One of my for­mer Lath­am law part­ners wrote, “You have to won­der how many are bewil­dered you are not dead yet.” Anoth­er Lath­am guy said, “Keep doing these birth­days long enough and you will be dead.”

High-pow­ered lawyers can be a pain in the butt. Why I left Lath­am to become a cab­bage vendor.

Undaunt­ed, I ate the pie and stashed the porce­lain lol­lipop in my desk drawer.

On my 75^th birth­day, I used it to save mon­ey on birth­day-cake can­dles. That year I also dis­cov­ered an arti­cle by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a renowned oncol­o­gist, bioethi­cist, and health­care advis­er to Pres­i­dents Oba­ma and Biden, enti­tled Why I Hope to Die at 75, in which he argues the world would be a bet­ter place if he and the rest of us kicked the buck­et at the three-quar­ter-cen­tu­ry mark. Accord­ing to him, at age 75 most of us head into a steep phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive decline. No longer capa­ble of mak­ing valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to soci­ety, we live on only to inflict crush­ing emo­tion­al and finan­cial bur­dens on our loved ones.

As a fresh­ly mint­ed mem­ber of the 75 club, I took offense and wrote a blog try­ing to rebut Dr. Zeke’s premise. See Stay­ing Alive at 75.

My 76^th birth­day rolled on by this month. One year past Dr. Zeke’s sell-by date, I haven’t plunged into a steep phys­i­cal decline. In fact, I’m in bet­ter shape now than I was ten years ago. Back then, I expe­ri­enced a sud­den weight gain. My rate of metab­o­lism slowed with age to the point that a banana slug could crawl over a field of jagged boul­ders faster than I could burn calo­ries. I could gain ten pounds inhal­ing the fumes com­ing off a hot pizza.

My doc­tor told me to go on a diet. Diets for my age group fol­low three basic prin­ci­ples: If it tastes good, you can’t eat it; if it tastes bad, you can only eat micro-por­tions of it; and if you drink any­thing con­tain­ing alco­hol, sug­ar, caf­feine, salt, mer­cury, lac­tic acid, fruc­tose, gluten, or arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers, it’ll kill you. You can eat lim­it­ed amounts of raw let­tuce, card­board-fla­vored sug­ar­less oat­meal, organ­ic non-fat plain yogurt, and noth­ing else. The good news is you can wash it down with as much water as you want, as long as it’s dis­tilled or boiled.

I couldn’t do it. Sug­ar-glazed donuts, fam­i­ly-sized bags of Dori­tos, Big Macs with large fries, and six­packs of Coors Light called out to me with siren songs I couldn’t resist. I went back to the doc­tor and con­fessed my eat­ing binges.

“You’ll become Jab­ba The Hut,” she said.

“I don’t care. I can’t eat piles of green leaves and bowls of por­ridge for the rest of my life. There has to be anoth­er way.”

My only alter­na­tive, she said, was to burn off the calo­ries. She pre­scribed a rig­or­ous exer­cise program.

I set up an in-home work­out area with an exer­cise ball, bar­bells, dumb­bells, ket­tle bells, resis­tance straps, and a weight bench. Three times a week, I jumped around, sweat­ed, and grunt­ed a lot. A few pounds came off, but the scales wouldn’t budge lower.

I hired a phys­i­cal train­er. She ratio­nal­ized my weight-lift­ing rou­tine and intro­duced me to bal­ance exer­cis­es. Falls are the lead­ing cause of injury and deaths for my age group. Every sec­ond of every day, some­one over 65 falls; 36 mil­lion falls per year; 32,000 deaths. Prac­tic­ing bal­ance reduces that risk, but it also gives you a good work­out. Try stand­ing on one foot for six­ty sec­onds. If you can do it with­out tip­ping over (most peo­ple over 65 can­not), your leg mus­cles will feel it big time.

My train­er incor­po­rat­ed a reg­i­men of chal­leng­ing bal­ance exer­cis­es into my rou­tine, but I still couldn’t hit my tar­get­ed weight. We added dai­ly walks. Walk­ing thir­ty min­utes burns 150 calo­ries and improves car­dio­vas­cu­lar health. I walk with my dog, P.D. Along with its weight loss ben­e­fits, stud­ies show dog-walk­ing is relax­ing and reduces stress. Appar­ent­ly, P.D.’s approach to walks was not includ­ed in these stud­ies. He has two gears, sub-low, where he stops to pon­der a scent for three hours, and for­mu­la-race-car high, dur­ing which he runs like the wind, jerk­ing my arm out of my shoul­der sock­et and drag­ging me on my bel­ly through bri­ar patch­es. Nev­er­the­less, when my walks with P.D. don’t esca­late into a near-death expe­ri­ence, they burn fat cells.

In the mid­dle of all this, I took up horse­back rid­ing. I didn’t turn to rid­ing for weight con­trol, but it turned out to be a big help. Groom­ing the hors­es, tack­ing them up, and work­ing around the barn shed weight, and rid­ing works the core, abs, pelvis, legs, and arms. Rid­ing at a walk burns 300 calo­ries an hour. You can burn 700 calo­ries at a gal­lop, but gal­lop­ing can also kill you. I ride most­ly at a walk.

With all that activ­i­ty, instead of expe­ri­enc­ing the phys­i­cal decline Dr. Zeke pre­dict­ed at age 75, my phys­i­cal con­di­tion improved greatly.

On the cog­ni­tive front, I’m in rea­son­ably good shape, too, although I’ll admit I’ve noticed a few minor issues. Vex­ing ques­tions I nev­er con­sid­ered a few years ago now con­sume an ever-grow­ing amount of my time. Puz­zling impon­der­ables, such as “Why did I walk into this room?” And “What day is it?”

I also tend to lose more stuff. Some­times in plain sight. Like the time I searched high and low for my cell phone when it was in my left hand, or the occa­sions when I couldn’t find my read­ing glass­es while they were perched on the end of my nose. But hey, these inci­dents are rare, occur­ring on aver­age less than once an hour. (I don’t include in this count all those times I lost my car keys. After all, it’s not my fault some wise-ass keeps sneak­ing into the house and hid­ing them in the refrigerator.)

And the rumors that I’m los­ing my mar­bles are flat-out false. It’s true I talk to P.D. So what? I’ve always talked to dogs, and I know I’m not nuts because no dog has ever talked back to me.

Okay, so the hors­es talk to me, but that doesn’t mean any­thing. It’s not a crazy Mr. Ed thing. The hors­es don’t vocal­ize. They con­verse tele­path­i­cal­ly, and they only express sim­ple con­cepts, like “You brought the car­rots, right?” And, ”If you didn’t bring the car­rots, why are you here?” I’ve nev­er had an extend­ed com­pli­cat­ed con­ver­sa­tion with a horse. Except that time when Jack­son asked me what was wrong and I told him I lost my car keys and he told me to look in the lit­tle refrig­er­a­tor in the tack room and so, of course, I thanked him when I found them in there and he said you’re wel­come, but there’s noth­ing strange about that because Jackson’s an excep­tion­al­ly intel­li­gent horse, and it only hap­pened that one time.

So, no thanks, Dr. Zeke! I’m not buy­ing what you’re sell­ing. Here I am at 76, a full year beyond your drop-dead date, and I’m in great shape phys­i­cal­ly (although gen­er­al­ly exhaust­ed and some­times seri­ous­ly injured), men­tal­ly as sharp as a razor (even if I don’t always know where I am, why I’m there, or why my car keys are in the refrig­er­a­tor), and plan­ning to bank a ton of mon­ey I’ll save on birth­day can­dles with my lol­lipop wafer over the next quar­ter cen­tu­ry, when at 101 I will remain dogged­ly and defi­ant­ly Not Dead Yet.

I was four­teen years old, and we’d just moved into the par­son­age in White Hall, Vir­ginia. I was walk­ing down the road to Wyant’s Store when a girl about my age came speed­ing up behind me on a fire-engine-red bicy­cle and almost ran me down. I jumped into the ditch as she raced by, laughing.

When I got to the store, she stood in the back by the drink machine sip­ping an orange Nehi. She tucked a strand of brown hair inside a head-scarf tied tight­ly to her chin and flashed an imp­ish grin at me. That grin led me to believe she’d brushed by me on her bike as a tease. I hadn’t made any friends in White Hall, so I approached her. “Hi,” I said.

She burst out laugh­ing, sprint­ed up the aisle, and bolt­ed out the door.

“What the heck?” I muttered.

Old Mr. Wyant, stand­ing up front by the cash reg­is­ter, shook his head and smiled. “Don’t mind Daisy, son. She’s pecu­liar. Runs in her family.”

Mr. Wyant was being kind. “Tetched in the head” was the phrase most peo­ple used to describe Daisy and her kin.

She wasn’t a teenag­er like I thought. She was 24 when she chased me off the road with her red Schwinn Phan­tom. She was still rid­ing that bike at age 34 ten years lat­er when I left White Hall. In all that time, I nev­er saw her with­out a scarf cov­er­ing her head. One of the girls from the church told me Daisy always wore scarves because she didn’t wash her hair. And although I saw Daisy laugh and gig­gle many times over the ten years I knew her, she nev­er spoke a word in my pres­ence. I don’t know if she couldn’t talk or just had noth­ing to say.

She lived in a trail­er in the woods with her moth­er, Lot­tie. Lot­tie was in her mid-fifties, short and stumpy with a weath­ered face, hearty laugh, and wide smile sport­ing a gap where her upper front teeth should have been.

Some­thing about her made me uneasy. I told one of my friends she gave me bad vibes. “You can’t let your guard down around her,” he said. “She’s the kind would sneak up on you in your sleep and cut your throat.” He based that com­ment on a rumor that Lot­tie sold Daisy’s favors to a man, and when he wouldn’t pay, she cut up his face with a penknife. I doubt this was true. There were lots of sto­ries about Lot­tie and Daisy, but they were usu­al­ly short on names and details.

Daisy’s father, Ray, and Lot­tie split up before I moved to White Hall. He lived by him­self in a lit­tle shack near Moorman’s Riv­er. He was in his six­ties, tall with a mel­on-sized bald head, round blub­bery face, flab­by chest, and bul­bous bel­ly that jig­gled when he walked. They say he was a good farm­hand in his day, but he no longer worked by the time I came along.

Peo­ple made fun of him for his curi­ous afflic­tion. About every ten sec­onds, he would emit a “Teep!” It was con­tin­u­ous, like a per­ma­nent case of the hic­cups. I don’t know how he got any sleep.

My bud­dy and I were squir­rel hunt­ing one after­noon when we heard a strange sound com­ing from the oth­er side of the hill. We hid in the brush and watched as Ray passed by us, stalk­ing small game with a shot­gun, try­ing his best to be stealthy, but even with his lips closed tight, the Teep came through. “Bup … Bup … Bup.”

Daisy’s old­est broth­er, Mar­tin, was a rail-thin scare­crow with dark sunken eyes. Most days he ped­aled a rick­ety bike to the old Pied­mont Store and stood in a cor­ner, star­ing vacant­ly into space. When spo­ken to, he replied, “I’m f‑f-fine. H‑h-how y‑y-you?” That was about as far as he could car­ry a conversation.

He suf­fered from an afflic­tion sim­i­lar to Ray’s, but his was episod­ic and it came on like a seizure. We were work­ing in the fields on a hot after­noon load­ing hay bales on a flatbed wag­on when one of his spells hit him. He began to roll his shoul­ders and duck his head. Then a raw, hoarse cry, like the honk of a goose, came up out of him from deep down in his chest. It repeat­ed about every ten sec­onds. Again and again. Martin’s spell last­ed about fif­teen min­utes, then died off as inex­plic­a­bly as it start­ed, and we all went back to work.

I saw him strug­gle through sev­er­al episodes over the years. They fol­lowed the same course. When they were over, we all went about our busi­ness and act­ed as though noth­ing had happened.

One of Daisy’s old­er broth­ers, Ned, worked full-time as a farm­hand. He lived alone in a room over a shed on the farm. In 1964, I worked beside him all sum­mer. He couldn’t read or write and got most of his infor­ma­tion from the radio. He was amazed that I knew so lit­tle about world affairs. He patient­ly explained to me that Hitler was alive in Argenti­na plan­ning a Nazi come-back, that the end of days would come in 1968 at dawn on East­er morn­ing, and that the Russ­ian launch of a cos­mo­naut into orbit was fake. “Don’t seem like you know much with all your book learnin’,” he said, curl­ing his lip. Despite my igno­rance, we got along well, and I learned a lot from him. He was a knowl­edge­able, reli­able farm­hand; he worked hard every day; and he paid his own way all his life.

Daisy’s youngest broth­er lived in the trail­er with her and Lot­tie. He usu­al­ly went out­side only at night when no one was around, but I caught a glimpse of him in a rare day­time sight­ing. My pal and I were rab­bit hunt­ing on an old fire road in the woods when Daisy and a tall lean man with coal-black hair came around a bend. At the sight of us, the man cried out and ran away, and Daisy fol­lowed him.

“That’s Jack,” my pal said. “He’s afraid of people.”

A cou­ple years lat­er, Lot­tie and Daisy showed up at the par­son­age, sob­bing. “Please help us, preach­er,” Lot­tie said. “We don’t have no one else to turn to.”

Dad drove down the grassy road to the trail­er. When he opened the door, blood spilled out on the steps. Inside, the shot­gun was still propped between Jack’s knees. When the sher­iff and med­ical exam­in­er were done, Dad cleaned the floor and walls as best he could, and Lot­tie and Daisy went back to live in the lit­tle tin box where Jack had killed him­self. They had no place else to go.

These old mem­o­ries lay dor­mant in the shad­ows of my mind until last week. Research­ing a White Hall fam­i­ly on Ancestry.com, I stum­bled across Daisy’s obit­u­ary. Since then, I’ve been think­ing about her and the oth­ers in ways I was too imma­ture to con­sid­er when I was a boy.

I won­der now how they got along. Fed­er­al wel­fare pro­grams were just get­ting off the ground back then; Virginia’s Depart­ment of Social Ser­vices was in its infan­cy; and non-emer­gency health­care didn’t extend to peo­ple who couldn’t pay. Jack’s psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­der, Ray’s afflic­tion, Martin’s seizures, and Daisy’s arrest­ed devel­op­ment all went undi­ag­nosed and untreat­ed. I don’t recall any­one even sug­gest­ing they should receive med­ical attention.

The White Hall com­mu­ni­ty pro­vid­ed a safe­ty net of last resort. When they got in big trou­ble, some­one always helped them out, but day to day they had to make do on their own with all their dis­ad­van­tages, and yet all of them, except Jack, lived into old age. Lot­tie and Ray died of nat­ur­al caus­es in 1980, Mar­tin in the 90’s, then Ned, and Daisy last in 2006.

It seems to me now that per­se­ver­ance in the face of immense obsta­cles and myr­i­ad dis­ap­point­ments should have earned Daisy and her kin some respect, but most peo­ple back then, includ­ing me, didn’t give it to them. Daisy’s obit­u­ary implies she went to her grave with­out gain­ing it.

“Daisy Lee Hatch, 69, died Novem­ber 6 at Martha Jef­fer­son Hos­pi­tal. Born March 8, 1937, in Free Union, she was the daugh­ter of Ray­mond and Char­lotte Hatch. She will have a pri­vate service.”

Three sen­tences. Thir­ty words. Terse, dis­mis­sive. Noth­ing about a life span­ning sev­en decades. No men­tion of sur­viv­ing rel­a­tives or mourn­ers. My guess is pri­vate ser­vice meant no service.

Daisy and her fam­i­ly lived hard lives. I wish I and oth­ers had treat­ed them bet­ter when it would have done them some good, but those days are gone and can’t be changed. All I can do now is remem­ber them, tell a small part of their sto­ry to keep their mem­o­ry alive, and hope their ghosts will par­don the thought­less­ness of the boy who lived in the par­son­age six­ty years ago.