Linda and Lynda

Linda and Lynda

Progression

Fraulein, A Maiden’s Prayer, and … Faded Love

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            It struck me as I walked in His garden this morning.

            The thermometer had registered only 33 in this neck of the woods, but it was there disputing the mercury. I smelled it.

            The smell of frost is like a harvest smell. It is akin to a cling peach harvest or the threshing of oats. It is timeless. It is a reminder that we are very much part of this world. Managing our surroundings and being part of natural cycles provides for the glory of God and the betterment of His creation.

            Fraulein, A Maiden’s Prayer, and … Faded Love

            Maybe it is just that time in life.

            Maybe it, too, was the funeral a bunch of us attended this week. It certainly had an impact. The deceased was just a young girl not too long ago if 1957 can be considered not too long ago. That is when I met her. We were sitting in the bleachers in the Field House at what was soon to be Western New Mexico University. She was full of life, and the tribute to her was that she lived that way until the day she left this world.

            Joe and his boys put their hats on in the chapel when they stepped up to play the first song of a medley of her favorite dance tunes. The song became a national sensation in the aforementioned year, 1957, when Bobby Helms sang a Lawton Williams tune entitled Fraulein. That once young girl had known it, though, when she heard her daddy, Forrest, sing it on stage at countless southern New Mexico dances.

            Far across the blue waters

            Lives an old German’s daughter

            By the banks of the old river Rhine

            Where I loved her and left her …

            The next song had roots across the same deep blue ocean, A Maiden’s Prayer.  It was originally intended to be a short piano piece written by a Polish composer well over a hundred years ago. To the gray-haired couples who danced to this melodic, romantic song as young lovers, it is a step back in precious time.

            Twilight falls, ev’nin’ shadows find,

            There ‘neath the stars, a maiden, so fair divine.

            Lonely there she kneels, and tell the stars above

            In her heart is a song, an’ there it belongs.

            The final song of the set, Faded Love, was the song that made Bob Wills our dancehall king forever. Of course, it was intended to be a sentimental song about lost love, but to so many, it accomplished the exact opposite. It became our official ballad of lasting love.

            Wet eyes were the predominate feature at its conclusion.

            It was then the boys took their hats off in respect to their heritage and their grandmothers’ lessons and demands and returned to their seats. Neal returned to the lectern and suggested that it would have been okay for all of us to have danced.

            We would have, and we would have thanked Linda for bringing us together.

            Linda or Lynda

            Somebody shared the fact that Forrest had wanted his kids to have ordinary names that nobody could corrupt with spelling errors. Joe, Linda, and Jimmy were simple, straight forward names that fit that bill. That went along fine until the ranch girl in the middle of that pack decided she needed a bit more intrigue in her appellation.

            It became Lynda, and all Forrest could do was to shake his head. She was her own navigator. That is the way she lived and that is way she departed from those she shaped and impacted.

            She was a lady.

            The service culminated in the call to meet with the family and offer shared encouragement of the grief that was universal to those who had come from far and near. We shook hands. We hugged. We laughed, we cried, and we remembered there is certainly deeper connections to the best things of our existence than the modern expressions that inundate our horizons.

            Grieving for lost loved ones is a biblical expression of faith when it is shared. In the grief of the moment, Linda certainly brought that fully into our midst. She controlled the moment just as she had spread the balance and grace of living a special life in this land, we call home. She was so much a part of it, and it was so much a part of her.

            She was the epitome of a true ranch lady.

            Progression

This was a celebration of life.

It was about family and it was about friends. It was about place. It was about the most meaningful time in American history in a land that people were part of and not extracted from. It was a first chapter from the chronicle that our forefathers envisioned.

As the day concluded and the next mornings arrived, thoughts of retrospect became conclusions. This is a life story about not just the way America should be, but it is the story of how all lives should be led. Linda Delk Cox left us with a great story. We shared it in words and expressions at the end, but it had been built everyday over her 71 years of living.

The medley of her favorite dance tunes best describes it. It started with all the glorious newness and possibilities of youth. She was that Grant County, Fraulein.

The Maiden’s Prayer became a matron’s prayer as her life unfolded as all the joys, the tragedies, and the promises of a devoted life came into focus and were experienced.

Finally, Faded Love was played. It was for all, but especially it was for Harley and the life he had shared with his wife. Indeed, it was a reminder of the most important lost love of this life, but the truth was revealed.

It was his fitting ballad of lasting love.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.