FOR MOST OF THE CENTURY: TO KEEP ON KEEPING ON (PART 47)

Jean Bell Mosley's new autobiography, "For Most of the Century," is only available in serialized form in the Southeast Missourian. Return each week for her continuing story.

With Mama's death, Edward's heart attack, my own period of depression and the ongoing national unrest, it would have been easy to slip into some "Slough of Despond" or "Dismal Swamp" of inactivity.

Always, though, there seemed to be something to snatch me back to my chosen path, a reflected light somewhere which reminded me of that day I realized God talked in many ways, maybe even sadness. And there was my daily re-affirmation that there is a Divine Order in the universe and I am somewhere in that order and have a part to play, even though it be as a little cog wheel, the workings of which Grandpa had explained to me when we studied the inside workings of his watch.

Just as William Faulkner's Nobel Price Acceptance speech had influenced me at the beginning of my writing career, here in the forlorn seventies, E.B. White, he of Charlotte's Web, was doing the same. He said in his 1971 National Medal for Literature acceptance speech: "I have always felt that the first duty of a writer was to ascend -- to make flights, carrying others along if they could manage it ... To do this takes courage, even a certain conceit ... Today with so much of earth damaged and endangered, with so much of life dispiriting or joyless, a writer's courage can easily fail him. I feel this daily ... but despair is no good -- for the writer, for anyone. Only hope can carry us aloft, can keep us afloat ... and a certain faith that the incredible structure (the earth) ... cannot end in ruin and disaster. This faith is a writer's faith, for writing itself is an act of faith, nothing else. And it must be the writer, above all others, who keeps it alive ... choked with laughter or with pain."

So I plodded on, especially in my weekly newspaper column, hoping I could assist others to "take flight" as E.B. White had said, even if it would be only a moment or two of thoughtfulness for my reader, as in the following, "Thoughts on Things Everlasting."

"My pancake turner got jammed in the cabinet drawer. The plastic handle snapped off sharply, leaving only a bobtailed stub to hold on to. My irritation at myself for so forcefully slamming the drawer and at the pancake turner's case of breakage were out of proportion to the non-importance or economical disaster of the event. I mumbled and grumbled and spoke sharply to the person I could see in the shiny side of the coffee pot.

I like for my kitchen tools to last and last; rather pride myself on their long lives. The wooden rolling pin, the metal measuring spoons and cups, slaw cutter, potato slicer are all the same ones I started housekeeping with.

There is in the family, somewhere, a metal can opener than is serving a fifth generation and could go on doing services for years unless some granddaughter on down the line gets sentimental about it, frames it, and hangs it up for all to see.

The charm of the can opener, other than its long life, is its simplicity. There is no corkscrew attached, no bottle opener, no puncturing device. It opens tin cans. You couldn't do anything else with it. Oh, maybe throw it at someone in a fit of rage, but we aren't a throwing family. It is the personification of singleness of purpose.

Lasting things with singleness of purpose! How gently they lie on my mind. In an age when it is use and discard, tire of things and throw them away, it is good to see something going on and on and on, even if it is only a can opener.

I think cults and offbeat religions spring up because some people want to try something new, something different, throw out the old tired basics. The Israelites flight from Egypt, the wanderings in the wilderness, the Ark of the Covenant, the Exile, Isaiah's and Micah's prophecies, the Birth, Death, Resurrection, and provision for salvation? "They're all so hoary with age, say the impatient, impertinent ones. "Let's get at it some new way, try something different, take our stand on some other rock."

I would like to challenge these "New-wavers" to get at the laws of gravity in some new way, to make the sun rise in the west, to have Venus and Jupiter change places. These things have real long whiskers they could pull and pull on forever to try to reshape or rearrange. How about "As a man thinketh in his heart, so he isn't?" Or "Raise up a child in the way he should go and he'll depart from it every time!" These things would be new but I'm afraid as easily demolished as a plastic spoon in a disposal.

Sometimes I have difficulty following the melody of a song when it is played in jazz time. There are all those little musical runs, and side roads, but I know the melody is there and how mistaken I'd be to follow a little trill and say, "Hey, I've found the melody."

I thought the following "Tangled Like Tar-baby in a Hedgerow," might not choke anyone with laughter as E.B. White suggested, but maybe make them grin:

"You got ter get outer here and see what's goin' on in de thicket," I sez to myself, reverting to my Uncle Remus dialect in order to lift the day out of wintertime Slough of Mediocrity.

Donning my fur cap and struggling into my rabbit coat (It's mock raccoon really, and getting a little tight), I went forth to the thicket, ordinarily known to me as the hedgerow, but today was to be up and out of the ordinary.

Halfway down the thicket-hedgerow Brer Rabbit hopped out in front of me. "Good Mawin," sez I. Brer Rabbit ain't sayin' nothin'.

"But," I sez around to myself, "Breb Rabbit's got ter have a winter home in there." Then, thinking I hadn't seen a rabbit's winter home in a long time, I had an overwhelming desire to find it.

I pushed aside the thick briars of the old fence row multiflora roses and leaned in. Stooped down. Didn't see anything. Pressed aside some stickery barberry that was once a fence hedge, clean and trimmed, but now grown wild along with the thousand other things. Went forward a few stooped-down steps. I felt something closing behind me. It was the thorny rose canes. They clung tenaciously to my rabbit-raccoon coat.

I parted a few more vines and inched forward. These vine didn't have thorns. I got the sinking feeling they were poison oak I saw growing along there last summer. Too late now if they so be. I went along, half sitting down, like a Russian folk dancer. In fact, I couldn't stand upright now for the roses and barberry and wild grape vines and possibly poison oak had closed like a Venus-flytrap above me.

Ever try to turn around, half sitting like a Russian folk dancer, in a fur coat, in a bramble of barberry stickers and thorny roses with knees past the felicitous manner of rising? And, look, here was something else. Spanish needles. They were aching to be transferred to another location to help populate the Spanish needle world.

My furry cap was far above me now, resting in the embrace of the multiflora rose bushes. Multiflora rose bushes? Hadn't I read they were bull proof?

"You done got yoself 'tached to a Tar-Baby," sez I. I tried to think of how Brer Rabbit had pried himself loose from the Tar-Baby, but my recollection powers were as tangled as my arms, legs, torso, hair and emotions. I smelled blood, too. I forgot all about Brer Rabbit's winter home. The idea was to get out of there.

Now what I'll have to do is get down low and practically crawl out of here," I said, in my sane, no-nonsense Midwestern voice.

Back home, straggled and draggled and bloody, too, I hastened to find the Uncle Remus book and re-read how Brer Rabbit had loosened himself from the Tar-Baby. He didn't. Uncle Remus left him there, stuck-up, offering only that there was a rumor, "Some say Jedge B'ar came 'long en loose im -- some say he didn't."

There is some sort of little moral to my adventure, just as Uncle Remus' stories sometimes have a moral. I had no more business disturbing Brer Rabbit's winter home than he did mine.

But it wasn't a mundane day. I got out by myself without any Brer Passerby coming to loosen me, or Brer Policeman coming to read me my rights.

The sad seventies seemed relentless. My beloved pet cat, Black Silk, died. She was soft, cuddly and loving. She could speak to me in "sign" language. Whenever I started down the sidewalk, keys in hand, to go to town, she would reach a paw out in front of my ankles to indicate she didn't want me to go away. When curled up in my lap, lying beside me on the couch or snoozing on my typewriter table while I typed, if I spoke loudly to someone in another room, she would instantly reach up a soft paw and place it over my mouth as if to say, "Hush." I wrapped her in one of those many embroidered pillowcases I had made, choosing a pretty one, and buried her under a cedar tree in the back yard. It was a graveyard for all our dead pets.

Worse than that, my sister Lou's husband, Earl, died. Edward was in the hospital at the time with phlebitis. Stephen stayed with Edward while only Peggy and I went to the funeral. At the time, Lucille had a broken arm and was in much pain. Everything seemed askew.

Then came the chilling series of entries in my journal:

Feb. 2, 1974 -- Edward had bloody stool. Called Dr. Wilson. Entered hospital at 11:00. No hemorrhoids. No growth in rectum. Possible diverticulitis.

Feb. 8, 1974 -- Edward's trouble diagnosed as diverticulitis.

May 16, 1974 -- Edward in hospital for sigmoidoscopy. Spastic colon in Dr. Wilson's opinion.

May 20, 1974 -- Edward still in hospital. Stomach X-ray and "air blown" X-ray to follow.

May 20, 1974 -- Dr. Shoss, after the "air blown" X-ray said there was a possible thickening of tissue where small intestine enters large intestine. Dr. Wilson prescribed a stronger tranquilizer. No exploratory surgery was recommended. We did not suggest one.

Aug. 14, 1974 -- Edward to hospital again for follow-up on X-ray to see if any change had occurred.

Feb. 18, 1975 -- Took Edward to hospital about noon.

Feb. 20, 1975 -- Entered hospital to visit with Edward. His chin was quivering. I asked what the trouble was. Not being able to answer, Mrs. Adams, the nurse, trying to make it easy said, "Oh they found a little spot on his liver."

When Dr. Wilson arrived, he spoke to me in the hallway of the hospital, confirming a cancer in the intestine had traveled to the liver. An office visit to Dr. Wilson, later that day, determined that surgery was advised.

Feb. 26, 1975 -- Edward will have surgery today at 1:00 p.m. Operation was over by 2:15. Dr. Charles McGinty (surgeon) spoke to me at the end of hall near ICU. He said the right colon was cancerous and that the liver was affected. Now we will think in terms of chemotherapy.

Before healing from the original surgery, another operation had to be made since the first stitches had burst open. The second operation was performed by Drs. Melvin Kasten and Bob Hunt, Dr. McGinty being away during the emergency.

There was a long period before the incision healed. I took Edward to Dr. McGinty's office for the dressings until he thought I could manage. He gave me the necessary surgical scissors, dressings, tape, etc.

May 7, 1975 -- Edward got his first treatment of floura-urasil this A.M., an injection in the arm. The plan is to give a series of treatments, once a week at Doctor Wilson's office, preceded by a blood check at Lovinggood's laboratory the day before. Then skip a week or two. From then on, it will be weekly visits to the lab to check on Edward's red and white blood cells. If the count is suitable, it will be off to the doctor's office for another injection.

At one time, it looked as if the treatments might work, at least for a long time. Dr. McGinty once said, "Ed, I see no reason why you can't live as long as you want to put up with these treatments."

It was a great statement to lift our spirits, at least for a little while. The treatments, thankfully, did not make Edward sick, but at length he could tell he was getting weaker and weaker.

On a bitter, deep-snow and icy day, Jan. 29, 1977, he died at Southeast Missouri Hospital. Stephen and I were both present. He is buried at Memorial Park Cemetery, Cape Girardeau, Mo.

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.