By Susan Shinn
sshinn@salisburypost.com
CHINA GROVE ó Her grandson summed it up perfectly on a dreary afternoon.
“Well, we needed the rain,” Ruth Overcash Brown would have said Friday.
The second thing she would’ve said, according to Bryan Overcash, was, “Wow! can you believe the people who came out for my funeral?”
And she would have counted every one at Concordia Lutheran Church, Bryan said. On Friday, Ruth’s grandchildren rose up and called her blessed. Reading scripture along with Bryan were Justin Overcash and Marcie Overcash.
“We are here to proclaim God’s word in God’s house,” Bryan said. “That would make her proud.”
Bryan’s brother, Jonathan, came from New Zealand last month to see Ruth, because they thought she was dying.
“But he found a very precious, very alive Mamaw,” Bryan said. “He spent a wonderful week with her, and even though he couldn’t be here today, I know he wouldn’t trade that week for anything.”
Standing in for Jonathan, Bryan’s daughter Ivy joined her father in reading the familiar passage from 1 Corinthians 13.
Bryan’s voice was shaky at times, but sweet Ivy, who’s 9 and the image of her beautiful mother, Meredith, read clear and true.
Following their reading, the Rev. Ken Reed noted how Ruth rose at 5 every morning to get her two boys, Jerry and Randy, and husband Ivy ready for the day before she left for 7 for Cannon Mills.”I’m glad she was a morning person, and I’ll bet you’re glad, too,” Ken said.
Ruth, he said, was a Proverbs 31 kinda lady.
“A good wife who can find? She is more valuable than rubies,” he said, reading from scripture. “Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.”
In choosing the gospel reading from Luke, Ken said that the women who visited Jesus’ tomb that Sunday morning were also morning people.
Jesus’ story included the women, Ken said. “God’s story is our story, and we’re all wrapped up together.”
During his six years as Concordia’s pastor, he said, he’s heard the same story over and over: “Ruth was just like a mom to me.”
Her home was a gathering place, and when she moved to an apartment at the Lutheran Home, she welcomed women to her home every Tuesday at 9 a.m. for more than 20 years.
When Ken visited Ruth, he quickly learned she’d be his last stop of the day.
“You couldn’t just drop in for just a quick hello with Ruth. It was wonderful every single time.”
Ken said that when she became in need of receiving care ó instead of being the caregiver she’d always been ó “She had been teaching you all along to care for her.”Like Bryan, Ken recalled the period of time last month when Ruth was so sick.
When he visited her that Saturday evening ó when they thought it was her last weekend ó as weak as she was, she counted her visitors.
She told him, “Pastor Ken, can you believe I had 47 people today?”
And she said something else: “I had no idea I meant so much to so many people.”
“Now her morning has come, her Easter has arrived,” Ken said. “Christ is risen, he is risen indeed! Death could not prevent the greatest story from being told.”
The joy of the resurrection is Ruth’s story, Ken said, and it’s our story.
Ruth counted many people among the family and friends who loved her ó and who she loved.
I am so very glad that number included me.