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Words have value, and are sometimes spoken at a great price.  In 1964, when I was in the first or second grade, my sister and I went to visit our grandparents on their ranch in the Hill Country.  It was summertime and heat radiated through the afternoon air as if from an open oven door.  Peacocks hid underneath the shade of live oak trees.  Half Sheepdog, half poodle mix pups napped underneath the ranch truck or in the shade of a cottonwood.  Red rosebushes lined the flower beds and climbed on white lattice trellises up the west side of the yellow-bricked, gingerbread trimmed house.  Fuschia crepe myrtles, blue snap dragons, green bells of Ireland, hens and chicks cacti, pecan trees and one lone mimosa punctuated a yard nearly overtaken by lush carpet grass.  The yard was my grandmother's artwork, her refuge and saving grace.  These bits of beauty were tender mercies during times that may not have felt all that merciful.  
    One afternoon, my grandmother emerged from the house wearing striped peddle pushers and a cotton blouse.  She carried a satchel of clothing in one arm and her black vinyl purse in another.  She said we were going visiting, and would be spending the night.   You see, she had promised my grandfather's widowed sister that she would not make her go to a nursing home should the need arise.  She lived a few miles away on her ranch and was completely alone.  Earlier that year, she had laced up her work boots, put on her bonnet and gone out to feed the chickens.  After gathering the eggs and dumping out a bucket of maize, she'd had a severe stroke.  Unable to move, she'd laid on the ground for two days before my grandmother had found her and gotten help.  After she was released from the hospital, unable to walk, talk or communicate in any way, my grandmother took care of her.  My great aunt remained in her own home while my grandmother spent nights and weekends with her, allowing the hired caregiver to go home. 
    In the evening, we watched Dr. Kildare and curiously observed our expressionless great aunt propped back in an easy chair.  We listened to the sounds of cicadas and of clucking hens as my grandmother shooed them inside the chicken house to roost for the night.  Grasshoppers thumped at the window screens and brown moths encircled the naked light bulb swinging from a cord in the living room.  Smells from the evening's dinner of fried chicken or pork chops, or venison sausage hovered in the rock house while my sister and I strung old wooden thread spools and ancient buttons into works of post-toddler art.  All the while, beads of sweat and face powder dotted our grandmother's upper lip as she worked without ceasing.  Each evening, she bathed her sister-in-law, tended to her sometimes unpleasant physical needs, and brushed her hair with an antique silver brush.  She spoke tenderly to her patient, never knowing whether anything was understood.  She continued to care for her sister-in-law until a second stroke took her life a year or two later.  She had made a promise and kept it regardless of the cost to herself.  Our grandmother continued to care for many others, rarely looking up from her work.  In 1993, she went to bed one cold December night and passed away as easily as sweet cream pouring from a pitcher.  It was only fair for her to have gone ahead in such a gentle, peaceful way.  I think she surely must have asked for it to be just so.  A spoken word has great value.