ODE TO MY SISTER BESSIE FIELDS NETTLES
By Uriah J. Fields

My Dear Bessie, blood sister, sixth child of your and
my mother and father and fifteenth child of your and
my father and mother and his first wife.

After eighty-one years of living on Planet Earth, on the
first day of Spring  you made your peaceful transition
from mortality to immortality.

You and I attended the Fields School, established
by and named in honor of our paternal Grandfather
who was born in slavery, located in the hamlet of
Sunflower, Alabama. You attended that school the
first seven years of your schooling and I attended
that school the first eight years of my schoolihg.
We both never ceased to praise our Grandfather
who lived to see us become, like himself, successful
adults.

For thirty years you taught children in the first grade
and enabled them to start their formal education and
appreciate life-long learning. You lived to see some
of them become teachers, like yourself, doctors
and successful in many fields of endeavor. You were
teaching in Monroeeville, Alabama, the home of the
author of "To Kill a Mocking Bird" when schools were
integrated and the parents of your students held you
in high esteem.

I lived in California for thirty-three years. Whenever I
visited you in Alabama I always felt that I had returned
home and I know that had much to do with you being
there. Christmas, three months before you departed
this life, we shared much and encouraged each other.
We sang Christmas carols and other songs, including
"Take Me to the King," the song that would be the
opening selection sung by the choir during your
Memorial Service. I recall three years earlier I had sent
you a recording of this song after you told me how
much that song meant to you. On the night of the most
recent Christmas Day you and I spent the night in a
hotel in Mobile. We only needed one room and two
beds. When I was fourteen years old there were two
siblings older than myself, four siblings, including, you,
younger than myself, our maternal Grandmother and
our mother living in a three bedroom house. You and
I knew what it meant to live in close quarters.

You were a dedicated Christian, having served in
many capacities in your membershp church that
included singing in the choir and teaching Sunday
School. You prepared food for your church and in
 your home for visitors who praise you for your cooking.

Like the Apostle Paul, when approaching the end of
his earthly abode, said, and I have heard you say:
       "7  I have fought a good fight, I have finished
             my course, I have kept the faith;
         8  Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown
              of righteousness, which the Lord, the
              righteous judge shall give me at that day
              and not to me only, but unto all them
             also that love his appearing."
                        (2 Timothy 4:7-8 KJV)

                     Farewell My Sister Bessie
        To lose the earth you knew, for greater knowing;
        To lose the life you had, for full life;
        To leave the friends you loved for heavenly
              loving an angelic fellowship;
         To have found a land more sweet than home
               and more awesome than earth;
          And now experiencing eternal joy in Heaven
               with God, your first and forever love
          What more feliicity can fall you, a free soul!

Copyright 2017 by Uriah J. Fields

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