BIRDIE DIES AT 108

She came to my hometown of Denton, Texas before I was born, and she eventually attained some degree of notoriety for her longevity. For several years she got her picture in our local paper for being the oldest person in our county. When she recently died at 108 her picture not only appeared once more but there was an extensive writeup as well. That is because Birdie Washington, a black woman, did more than simply survive in this troubled world for 108 years, though that is no mean accomplishment.

When her story appeared in the paper I decided that I would attend her funeral, even though I had never met her. I was impressed that while she outlived her husband and all of her four children she was survived by 13 grandchildren, 31 great-grandchildren, and 10 great-great grandchildren. I wanted to look in on such a funeral as that, and I was hopeful of talking to some of them about what they had learned from her. Besides, we should all attend a black person’s funeral now and again, for where else will one hear the old spiritual “Walking Around Heaven All Day.” It does something to your innards.

I have visited every black church in Denton and I always found myself the only white person present, which is of course all right with me, except that it is a grim reminder of how segregated our society is. Since Birdie had lived among us for so long I supposed that the service this time would be integrated, but again, except for a white woman who had married into a black family, I was the only white person in the packed church.

Birdie left us in style, all first class. Not only were there beautiful flowers, but her small, frail form rested in a pure white stainless steel casket. As they say, she was put away nice. Back when she worked as a farm hand for $5.00 a week she could hardly have dreamed of ever faring so well.

The reverend pastor spoke briefly, as requested by “the worn out family,” on the brevity of life. Even Methuselah who lived 969 years, he noted, finally “had to get out of here.” Using a biblical metaphor in an unusual way, he pointed out that all of us who live in this world, whether few or many years, will one day hear the trumpet and will have to “get out of here.” Birdie Washington, at 108, which he thought was a long time, at last heard the trumpet. Now she’s “walking around heaven all day.”

I thought more could have been said about what Birdie’s life says to our drug-addicted, dope-peddling, crime-ridden, welfare-oriented society, which was probably well-represented in the assembled mourners. Birdie lived in a day when the poor had no choice but to work. She arrived in Denton by train with only one possession of any real value, a big horse, which she traded in as a down payment on a little home. She paid the mortgage by picking cotton in the fields that were abundant in Denton county when she was a young woman. She eventually became a capitalist, buying property next to her and renting it.

U sing a wooden box as a cradle for her baby, she would nail it to the trunk of a tree while she worked in the field and her other children played beneath the tree. When the baby needed her, the family’s trained dog would pull it to her in a little wagon. Birdie of course knew the pain of being black in a white person’s world. She could not attend the “good” school with little white girls, nor drink from the same fountain or even go to the same toilet. She was delighted to play with the white girls’ throw-away dolls. She was an old woman before she ever dared to enter a white man’s restaurant or call at a white family’s front door. So she never got much of that kind of thing done. She grew up with no illusion that she was anything more than a second-class citizen, “a Negro” (when folk were nice to her) that hardly counted at all. In her day she was not even “a black,” and civil rights was not even a dream. She learned to survive by working for the white folks and otherwise staying out of their way. She wasn’t interested in handouts. She at last owned two houses side by side!

Her’s was a simple philosophy. Work hard, mind your business, and look to the good Lord. Early on she joined the Church of God in Christ, and it was at this church that her home going was celebrated. Jesus was her Lord, the church her larger family, and faith her victory. When I asked one of her clan what she would remember most about Birdie, the answer was that she was always kind and generous. Another referred to the joy in her life. Hard work, kindly deeds, joyous living all add up to 108 years.

They say Birdie is now walking around heaven all day. Unlike Denton, Texas, heaven we may assume is everywhere integrated. Birdie doesn’t have to call at nobody’s back door no more.—the Editor

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The unexamined life is not worth living.—Socrates