|
CLARA BOYD RICHEY (1940 - 2001) LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY SISTER CLARA It has been stated that the purest form of praise comes from children and/or suffering. A few days ago, as I sat down to write Clara's obituary, I reflected on a day in 1974 when I received a call from my dad informing me that Clara had taken ill. Since that time, she suffered almost 27 years, which equates to 324 months; 1404 weeks; 9,855 days; 233,280 hours; 13,996,800 minutes; 839,808,000 seconds. During her illness, she took almost 30,000 meals, and she missed almost 1500 Sundays from church. Why do good people (the righteous and the innocent) sometimes suffer great sorrow and affliction? In the Bible the book of Job discusses this age-old problem which is perhaps one of the deepest mysteries of human life. Job, a good man who was greatly afflicted, rejected the traditional view that suffering was the result of sin because he had no doubt about his innocence. Job was thoroughly perplexed over why God should have sent such a calamity upon him since he did not doubt that God was totally just. After searching dialogue between Job and three friends, God himself spoke out of a whirlwind reminding Job that the universe and the creatures in it are beyond the understanding of mere mortals. Man cannot presume to argue with God about what He chooses to do. While no explicit solution to the problem was given, Job was satisfied by an experience of immediate communion with God ("now my eye sees thee"); his humility and trust were deepened by his suffering. One's trust in God cannot help but be deepened when the type of suffering Clara endured is experienced. I truly believe that Clara had an experience similar to Job's. At the depths of her agony, she sometimes questioned God, other times became angry with God, and many times asked her childhood hero why was a loving God allowing her to suffer so much? Although I always tried to answer her with love and biblical presence, my declarations of God's power, promises, and sovereignty always seemed less than what she deserved and fell far short of describing what God is really like. "READY OR NOT HERE I COME!" On July 14, 1940 in a small coal mining hamlet in Saint Clair (Acmar) County, Alabama, Clara exploded upon the scene. So intent was I on the marble game at the edge of the dirt road in front of our house that I hardly noticed when the community midwife and the white country doctor entered our home. I had hardly slept the night before because I had been concentrating on a special strategy to take Billy Joe Sanders down. You see, the word was that when it came to aggies, Billy Joe had 'game'. In my mind, I was sure that Billy Joe fudged a lot, but I could never catch him. Just when I had victory in my sight, Mrs. I. Wilma Leonard, our next door neighbor, summoned me to our combination living room/parents' bedroom to introduce me to my new "little sister." From that moment on, my parents and my life would never be the same. Instantly I became a "big brother"; my father became the head of a balanced family; and my mother had the little girl that every mother always wanted. Clara's natural beauty and charisma cast a brilliant light that really thrilled our lives. During the first three years of her life, prior to the birth of my brother Donald, our family bonded as no other in rural Alabama. Our parents took a lot of pride in grooming, dressing and showing off their children. The two of them spent many evenings merely working on hair-do's. My mother would sit on the porch in a ladder back, cane bottom chair with Clara seated between her knees and a bowl of hair pins, bows and ribbons on one side and a jar of Vase |