The corn is still coming in from the fields around the town near the farm where my grandmother was raised, where she went to school and then returned to teach, and where she returned for the last time when we buried her Saturday morning, beside her parents and a baby brother. In the mean time, she saw a wider world, but probably not wider skies than these.
The sign at the entrance to Dakota Ethanol in Madison warns to call first about delivering wet corn. It's been a difficult harvest this year, I'm told, challenging farmers and elevator operators alike. As my farm-raised father said when he saw the waiting grain at Oldham: not the ideal way to store corn.
The Lutheran pastor read from John 12 yesterday at my grandmother's memorial service:
24I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
My grandmother believed those words with her whole heart and soul.