Martha Heller took in wayward Christian men
I was one of her boarders for a year
I wasn’t Christian
but I was in pain
and that was mostly why she took us in.
She named this place Raspberry Springs.
It is 25 acres of forested Virginia land
between the towns of Fry and Jefferson,
pinned to the side of Mar Lu Ridge,
accessed by an unmarked drive way,
too easy to miss.
And it all lit up when the sun would set.
The Heller’s built guest quarters
a hundred yards up the hill
Purely a functional structure
housing servants who care for the ill,
no elaborate architectural design,
aside from a common commode,
no common areas.
Its simplicity, purely in the service of the divine.
Several small balconies
jutting out of a maze of small rooms,
each with westward facing,
perfect kingly views.
Yet it stored rag doll men,
with little to gain,
and nothing to lose.
For a while I lived on the opposite wall
of a spindly fellow
whom I only saw
once in a while
Always half in shadows
moving about quietly
He was a recovering drunk
I was recovering from sobriety.
I often heard him crying,
his sobbing came from everywhere
It made me sad, out on my balcony,
ironically slowly sipping my warm canned beer.
Then one day,
maybe because I paid my rent on time,
Martha moves me to “the big house"
and the entire basement became mine.
Five years earlier, Martha’s son had died
the spindly fellow would confide,
"Cancer took him you know."
Two years later,
she finally had the courage
to let the hospice nurses go.
There were no meals to be made
no medicines to give,
just bills to settle
and lives to live.
They kept her son comfortable,
wheeling him down to the raspberry pond,
There, his eyes would come alive and colorful,
though his body was gray and gone.
Now, the uniformed caregivers
were only reminders
of when he was alive...
and when he was dying.
I can imagine the caravan departing,
rolling down the dirt road,
Martha, up the hill crying,
while her husband,
toiled silently in the boy's room,
disassembling the bed,
he’d later haul out
to an old tractor shed.
Though no relation,
Martha Heller shared my mother's maiden name.
She always said,
this is why I came;
to find family again.
This is why she took me in,
and treated me like a Heller all the same.
How had it come to this?
From my sprawling ranch property and
well stabled horses,
to the company of convalescing druids.
While, my own children who‘d recently learned to talk and read
were 30 miles away on the other side of Raspberry Springs.
I had become the ghost of a woman’s dead son,
a shell of a Christian man.
And this is why Martha Heller
took me in.
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