Hepzibah

“Let’s drive passed that house where I know Raymond is,” Gramma said while we took the freeway back from her weekly wash and set.

Raymond is her late husband (who passed in 1989). However, he has been brought back to life in Gramma’s memory for several months now. There is absolutely no reason to try to convince her otherwise, as she will just have to live the pain of it again. Even if you think that to tell her he has passed might alleviate some of the pain of wondering why he doesn’t come to see her think again. After all, in her head he lives just down the street somewhere.

Even if you want to say, “Gramma, he hasn’t forgotten about you. He’s passed away,” to help her passed thinking he no longer cares about her – you would be wrong. There is no way to get her through those moments by saying something genius or reassuring. She always navigates her way through it on her own somehow. You just have to go with it.

“I don’t know where the house is,” I told her.

“I’ll show you,” she said.

“Okay.”

We drove a few more miles into town and she said, “Well, we better not do that. He might not like it.”

“Okay,” I said and continued to drive.

A few more miles down the road, she said, in a matter of fact tone, “Well, we might as well go on to Hepzibah.”

She said it with a mischievous grin and just that tone that makes you know it is a phrase she and others around her have uttered before at some point in their lives. Hepzibah represented to her a particular type of place. Perhaps it is a place just outside of the realm of possibility. Or perhaps it is a place that can’t be found.  Or perhaps it is more like a Land of Oz or a Narnia, a place where dreams come true, or where nothing bad happens and everyone is good.

I’m sure it simply means, for the person saying it, that they think the trip a particularly long one. And, “since we’ve come all this way, we may as well go on to Hepzibah.”  But, why Hepzibah?” It does have an intriguing quality to its name – Narnia-esque, if you will.

“Where is Hepzibah?” I asked.

Gramma laughed. “I’ve never been to Hepzibah. But I always wanted to go just to see it.”

She got such a grin on her face when she said it, I was intrigued.  Why not, I thought. So, as I had videos in the back seat to return to Blockbuster, I decided to take them back with Gramma and drove on passed our exit.

After a moment of silence, Gramma said, “We may not make it there before dark.”

“Yes we will,” I assured her.

Then she began looking at the road and the signs in order to help me navigate. As we crossed the Kanawha River on our way to (South Charleston) Hepzibah, Gramma said, “It should be the next exit.”

At the next exit, I got off and took 2^nd Avenue around so that I could drive through the middle of South Charleston. It is a perfectly laid out little grid of streets shared by both residents and businesses. Of course, the city itself extends up into the hills on one side, but the little stretch of South Charleston proper is so nice a little community to find at the foot of the hill upon which so many residents live.

“I don’t recognize any of this,” Gramma said.

“That’s because you’ve never been here before.”

“Where?”

“Hepzibah.”

“So this is Hepzibah,”  she said looking around at the houses and businesses we passed.  At this point I think we were just sharing in the fun of it. I think she was well aware that the numbered and lettered streets of South Charleston, WV was not Hepzibah. But, if Hepzibah represents that  which is just beyond your destination, then South Charleston was, at that moment, with those thoughts, absolutely Hepzibah.

I drove through Blockbuster, dropped off the videos and took the main road back to the freeway.

“You’re getting back on here?” Gramma asked.

“Yes,” I said and pointed up into the hills of South Charleston. “My house was right up there on the hill.”

“I was only there once,” she said. She is right. She was there only once. The steps were too hard for her to climb, so the once had to be enough.

Once on the freeway back to Charleston, Gramma looked at the sky and the remains of a beautiful sunset, and said again, “We’re not going to make it back before dark.”

“Yes we will,” I assured her. “It’s not even a hop, skip and a jump. It’s just a hop and skip. Hop on the freeway and skip over the river.”

Gramma laughed.

As we pulled off the freeway onto our exit, and everything began looking familiar to her Gramma smiled. Holding up her fingers just an inch or so apart to show how close we came, she said, “It’s this much dusk.”

“Yep,” I said. “We made it.”

To Hepzibah and back again, we went. Just because she’s nearly 91 and “just this much dusk” doesn’t mean Gramma can’t do something she’s always wanted to do, right?

When I got home, I Googled Hepzibah (using various different spellings before I found the right one), and found it to be a small unincorporated town that occupies only one square mile or area (situated on both sides of Route 19) 6.5 miles from Bridgeport, WV. Less than one thousand people live in this little town, and no one is really sure how it got its name.

It was established by a land grant in 1775. It’s still there, and still unincorporated. Thus, if you Google it, you will see several entries that say Current Population: 0. Or – Estimated Current Population:0. And yet, nearly 1000 people live there, happily co-members and owners of their own little space in the world.

Hepzibah – our own little space in the world – a perfect place for me and Gramma to visit on such a beautiful evening.

Advertisement