The Melody Lingers On

By Crystal Jolly and Ruth Jolly

In the summer of 1978, I took my quarter horse to lead trail rides for kids at a Bible camp in rural Iowa. I had just found out my sister, Melody, had been diagnosed with the fastest-acting, worst-type of leukemia. My mom wrote me letters every day that I was away (nobody called long distance unless it was a true emergency in those days). I kept those letters and compiled them into the journey that was our lives that summer.
Melody Heuss prayed that God would bring her closer to Him during a time when she felt she had drifted away from Him in her daily walk.
I don't know what it would be like to choose my young husband's new wife. I don't know what it would be like to handpick a mother for my two small children; but my sister did. When she knew she was going to die, she convinced Carl, her husband and love of her life, to re-marry. Melody made a list of eligible women and then narrowed it down to one that Carl had never even met! All the while she was having numerous bone marrow aspirations, blood transfusions, and chemotherapy that would turn her 28-year-old body into a bald, disease-ravaged weakling. Her inner strength, courage, and attitude brought inspiration to every single person who walked into her hospital room and life. Nurses, family and friends were changed forever by the way she handled her passing into the next life.
This is a story told from Melody's mother, Ruth's, point of view, the writer of the letters. The frustrations and difficulties of watching her child suffer tugs on your heart. You will also get a glimpse of what I went through being away from home, and being torn between wanting to be in the hospital room, but knowing I was where God wanted me to be. Plus, you get to witness Susan, the young woman who had already endured many loses and heartbreaks of her own, step into this family on faith.
Ruth personally witnessed the power and assurance of God's eternal love for us, even in her grief. On the early August morning of Melody's passing, Ruth received a gift most of us never get to see. It was a message from God, declaring the promise of life after death in a physical, tangible way. It was a real miracle that all Christians can believe in and cherish.
Crystal Jolly

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491802021

Crystal Jolly

Crystal Jolly is the sister of Melody Heuss. She received many letters from her mom, Ruth, during the summer when Melody was passing from this life. She lives in Des Moines, Iowa with a Doberman and an Italian greyhound. This is her first book.

Book preview

Contents

Part 1

Part 2

Chapter 1

Crystal

Chapter 2

Ruth

Chapter 3

Melody

Chapter 4

Ruth

Chapter 5

Melody

Chapter 6

Susan

Chapter 7

Ruth

Chapter 8

Susan

Chapter 9

Ruth

Chapter 10

Melody

Chapter 11

Ruth

Chapter 12

Ruth

Chapter 13

Susan

Chapter 14

Ruth

Chapter 15

Crystal

Chapter 16

Ruth

Chapter 17

Crystal

Chapter 18

Ruth

Chapter 19

Ruth

Chapter 20

Beverly

Chapter 21

Ruth

Chapter 22

Ruth

Chapter 23

Susan

Chapter 24

Crystal

Chapter 25

Melody

Dedication

Thanks to Jan Davison for her front cover design and to Joan Mahaffey for her hours of support on this project.

And a special thanks to my parents, Fay and Ruth Jolly, who gave me many gifts, the most important of which was introducing me to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave me eternal life.

Crystal

First things first. I want you to get to know them, the ladies of this story. They are wonderful and heartbreaking and real.

I organized Part II of this story first and thought that was the whole story. And then a friend read it and thought the reader should have the chance to get to know both Ruth and Melody before the events of the summer of 1978 that changed everything for us. So, I’m taking some snapshot memories from Ruth and giving you a glimpse of their lives. Ruth says she loves to write but doesn’t believe she writes well. She wonders who would want to read it.

It matters to me that you understand them and that you like them. I hope that you do.

Jolly7.jpg

Fay, Ruth & Melody in 1952.

Part 1

Ruth

I am Ruth Janice Johnson Jolly of Des Moines, Iowa, and was the first born of Lewis and Ida Fern Keeling Johnson. On March 3, 1922, I was born at home, a few miles west of Norwalk, Iowa, in a house which is no longer there, on the north side of the road.

My parents were married on June 8, 1921, at my mother’s home near Avon Lake and Carlisle, in the northeast corner of the dining room. My Auntie Marie tells me chicken sandwiches, wedding cake, and coffee were served.

Things keep coming into my mind so fast as I write this. One memory jumps right into another memory. I’m afraid it may be jumbled, this telling of events.

I weight about 113 pounds now, which is just what I weighed when I graduated from Indianola High School in 1939. I jumped up to 132 pounds eating hospital food when I was in nurses training at Iowa Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines from 1941 to 1944. I was five foot two, but have now shrunk to five feet and my proportions are different than in 1939.

My hair was light brown till it turned grey and I have green eyes. I sunburn and bruise easily.

As I was growing up and while both sets of my grandparents were alive, we took turns every other Sunday, after going to church, visiting one of their homes. All of my mother’s brothers and sisters and their children were at my parents’ house and the same at my dad’s. That meant a houseful, as I had lots of cousins. At Grandpa and Grandma Keeling’s we kids, me being the oldest, ate in the kitchen while the grownups ate in the dining room. I remember my cousins Dick, Barb and Peg being fond of olives and on Sunday in particular when there was a lot of olive throwing. As shy as my sister, Jeanne, and my brother, Merrill, and I were, it is hard to imagine us being involved in this.

The Keeling farm is a beautiful, big place just northwest of Carlisle. It is said that Charles Keeling, my grandfather, was one of the leading agriculturalists of Allen Township, as owner of 210 acres of valuable land. Jeanne and I always stayed several days and nights at the farm during the summer. We slept in the same room as our Auntie Marie, my mother’s sister, who was not married yet. She always told us stories after we went to bed. She was a first-grade teacher.

In the evening we would take turns riding on Grandpa’s shoulders when he’d go out to shut up the chicken coop in the grove. He was the nicest, kindest man I can ever remember knowing. Since I was the first grandchild, I got a lot of attention.

The farm has a big, red-brick barn and silo. There used to be a cave just north of the house where fruits, vegetables, eggs and home-canned goods were kept all winter. It always had that wonderful fruit smell and was so cool in the summer time.

In their house they had a big, upright Victrola with many records and we spent hours turning the crank by hand. There was also a player piano with many rolls of music. We had to peddle with our feet to get them to roll to make the music. The house still has a huge, screened-in porch covering the entire front of the house with a swing, hammock and chairs.

Everyone was poor in those early days. We didn’t realize we were poor, as everyone else was poor too, and just like us. My dad separated cream from milk and traded it in town for groceries—the barter system. My aunt told me my mother had only three dresses but did beautiful fancy work and would trade it with her sisters for dress material. My mother made all of my clothes and Jeanne’s. I remember the first dress I got to pick out in a store in Des Moines when I was nine or ten. Mostly our dresses were made from flowered feed sacks and our pillow cases were, too. Before I turned 12, every year we got our hair cut when school was out for the summer. We sat on a board across the barber chair arms, so we’d be high enough for the barber to reach us. One summer I got a new style called windblown. When we were done, we each got to buy a five-cent ice cream cone. That was a really big deal!

I didn’t see my first movie till I was twelve. I believe it was a Shirley Temple, but I don’t remember much about it.

I do recall having my tonsils removed at age five at a Des Moines’ clinic. It was done in the morning and I know I was given vegetable soup with green beans in it later that day, but there was no way I could swallow anything.

We ate lots of cornbread and beans and so many canned cherries that I was not too fond of. My mom baked all the bread and made lye soap in a big, black iron kettle outdoors in the fall, after my dad had butchered. The soap was put in containers and cut when it was dry enough and put in the attic to finish drying.

Butchering day was a big day. A pig or cow would be killed and hung in a tree by its feet. This would be done at the start of cold weather. The meat would be smoked or canned. We raised many chickens so we had lots of fried and stewed chicken, and all our own eggs. We even had incubators in the basement where my mother hatched baby chicks. We had a huge garden, raising and canning everything. My mother was a wonderful cook and baker. She would prepare big meals when the thrashers would be at our place with their large thrashing machine. It seems there must have been 16 to 18 men and they were hungry, so she’d have huge delicious meals. There is nothing like young fried chickens that are killed and dressed and fried the same day.

Of course we had no refrigerator or ice box—only a cistern with a box, with shelves that we cranked up or down. It kept the butter and food cool in the summertime. We did have lots of homemade ice cream, as we had all the ingredients except sugar and we had to go to town to the ice house for the ice. I’m thinking of the best maraschino cherry ice cream that Auntie Marie often made for Sunday dinner. Then we had steak, gravy, hash browns, and milk for breakfast. My Uncle Floyd always wanted ice in his glass of milk. We had a huge orchard for our own fruit, including apples, cherries, and plums.

We went to Sunday school and church every week at the Christian Church in Norwalk. My mother taught a Sunday school class and my dad was superintendent at one time. We dressed up in our very best clothes. I went forward at a revival meeting and was baptized at age eleven.

When we visited my other grandparents, John and Eliza Chiles, (my dad’s father died when my dad was 17 and his mother remarried) the gardens had the most beautiful flowers which took up most of the front yard. I especially loved the holly hocks that came up all over every year. She also had a fish pond near the flower gardens. How my daughter, Crystal, would have loved that garden!

They also had a cave to keep food cool where we would go when a summer storm was threatening. It was at their house I learned to really like creamed, stewed tomatoes with chunks of cooked mango peppers.

When they got a crystal radio, it was such a magical thing. We had to wear the earphones and there was an arm with some sort of needle on the end of it. We’d set the needle in a different place on the crystal top and be able to actually hear a man talk! We listened to Jack Armstrong, One Man’s Family, Ma Perkins, Fibber McGee and Molly, and Gang Busters. Inner Sanctum was a scary favorite. It came on in the evenings and once when Jeanne and I were listening, Dad really scared us by going outside and scratching on the window.

My grandparents had no phone. I believe we got our first phone around 1925.

We had so much fun with all my cousins. Ralph was my age and Hugh just a little older. When Hugh was 13 and Ralph was 11, they drowned in the Des Moines River when they were on a Sunday School outing at the Ledges State Park, near Boone. In those days, the body was kept in the home after being embalmed. The body and casket was there until the funeral and the family, with friends and relatives, stayed up all night with the body.

The boys’ bodies, in their caskets, were in a small bedroom off the living room. All the adults sat up all night but we kids slept crossways in beds upstairs. I was 11, and Jeanne 8. Merrill, my brother had not yet arrived. Harold was my youngest cousin at the time, as he had just had his third birthday. We kept him with us the day of the funeral. He was the cutest little curly-haired blond I’ve ever seen.

For some reason I was always afraid our house would catch on fire. I was afraid to go to sleep at night and tried to plan how I would escape out our bedroom window onto a porch roof and jump.

We were also frightened by the noises and running sounds in the walls of the house. Dad told us not to be afraid as it was only rats in the walls.

The basement was a scary place too, as it had a dirt floor and I know there were mice and rats there too, I’m sure.

Grandma Chiles lived another five years after Grandpa John died. She spent most of that time living two to three months at a time with each of her children. When she was with us, we put a bed for her in the dining room. She had a finger game she played with Jeanne, my cousin Gertrude and I. A rhyme went with it and I have no idea where she learned it—may have been something popular at the time. It makes no sense really, but this is the way I remember it sounding to me as a child:

Eenery, beanery, kittry corn, apple seeds and apple thorn,

Wire, briar, limber, lock, seven geese sitting in a flock.

Up jumped Todd with his big long rod and scared them all off the Wiggly Wob.

One flew east and one flew west and some flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

William Tatrempity eats good melon,

Catches hens and puts them in pens.

Some lays eggs, and some lays none.

Underfoot, specklefoot, trip up your way and be gone off home.

I taught this to my daughter, Crystal, and Jeanne taught it to her daughter, Diane.

I had whooping cough the last of January 1927, when I was nearly five. According to my baby book, I had it very hard. My parents were moving at this time, so my Grandpa and Grandma Keeling and aunts and uncles living at home took care of me. I can remember coughing so hard that Uncle Floyd would hold me up to the sink, as I usually vomited from the coughing.

I had chicken pox in the spring of 1932 and mumps in 1935. The three-day measles waited until I was a freshman at Simpson College in May of 1940.

I started first grade when I was five and a school bus picked me up in front of our home. I went all day, five days a week, and took my lunch in a tin dinner bucket. We lived on a dirt road and in rainy weather, especially in the spring when the frost went out of the road, it had deep ruts and sometimes only a horse and wagon could get us out. Sometimes in the winter, the snow was so deep, we’d go to school on a bobsled that had a canvas covering to help keep us warm. It wasn’t unusual for the snow to cover the fence posts. Everyone wore long underwear all winter.

When it was hay time, I rode the horse that pulled the hay from the wagon onto a pulley at the top of the barn and inside across the barn. My dad would holler loudly so I’d know to turn the horse around and walk back to the barn while dad tripped the fork of hay to fall in the hay mow. I liked this.

My mother always baked an angel food cake on our birthdays to take to our class. At the same time, she’d make a small one and give it to the janitor, Joe Kennedy. I remember him being short and plump and round—but maybe he wasn’t. My mother was such a kind, sweet person—and didn’t want anyone to feel left out. She was president of the PTA and liked by everyone.

My first pair of overalls was blue and white striped. We got them when we were in elementary school to wear in the winter at home. Pants were not worn by girls then, but I sure liked them.

We always stood and said the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of each school day and prayed.

It was always a big deal when the Fuller Brush man or the Watkins man came with their suitcases of samples for us to buy. There was Watkins’ vanilla, spices, ointments, etc. It was a thrill for Jeanne and I to stand back and watch as the salesman showed everything to mom.

The few months we lived in town, in Norwalk, when I was twelve, were a lot of fun. After dark several of us would play chalk mark all over town. We divided up into two sides. One side had a piece of chalk and would go ahead of the other group, putting chalk arrows in the direction they were going. Marks would be on the sidewalk or on posts. Then the other group would follow their marks all over town. There was never any fear of kids out roaming the streets after dark, as there is today. In the winter it was always dark when the mail came to the post office and we kids usually went up after it.

I had two years of tap dancing and ballet when I was 13 to 15 years old. I wasn’t really very good and I imagine the folks gave me lessons hoping to somewhat bring me out of my shyness. It didn’t work that way. I practiced tap dancing on the wood floor of a sleeping porch. Jeanne and I had a few piano lessons before I was 12, but I didn’t take to that either. I was really only an average student. I was so shy and really didn’t apply myself as I wish I had. Looking back, I wish I’d studied harder and gone into psychology or studied how the brain works; why we do the things we do, etc. But now it is too late. Learning has never been easy for me; nor has memorizing.

I should add that I can sing and carry the tune to most any song in my head. It’s just not in tune when audible! Isn’t that a shame?

We had to use an outhouse on the farm till we moved when I was 12. When we went to the outhouse before bed it was dark and we were really afraid. Mom would take a lantern and go with us. There were