My name is Ernestine Pugh. I am 61 years old and I have directed the Sanctuary Choir at our church for thirty years this month. My husband, the Reverend Calvin Pugh, has pastored that church for twenty-four years. I was there first, and I remind him of it. On Monday, August 2, 1999, at our kitchen table, he had a stroke. My grandson Darnell, who is in college studying computers, made me this page so I could stop telling the same news on the telephone forty times a day. I have found I tell the truth better to this machine than I do on the telephone. So I am going to keep it up.

If you are a praying person, please pray for Calvin. If you are not, I will take your good thoughts, and I thank you.

Sunday, September 26, 1999
Hymn for today: "Blessed Assurance"

Today was our choir's thirtieth anniversary program, three o'clock in the afternoon, and I will tell you that I thought about cancelling it at least once a week since August. Calvin would not let me. He can't say much yet, but he can say "No," and he said it every time I brought it up, and he said it with his whole face.

Three sister churches sent their choirs. The ushers wore white gloves. The church was full, all the way to the back pews and folding chairs down the side aisle, and it was hot, because September in Memphis is just August with a different name. We had the printed program with the gold cover that Sister Odom's nephew did on his computer.

Darnell and Deacon Hubbard brought Calvin in the side door in his wheelchair at a quarter past three. The whole church stood up. Nobody told them to. They just stood up, and some of the mothers of the church were crying already, and I had to turn around and face my choir so nobody could see my face.

We closed with "Blessed Assurance," because that is his hymn, and it was the first thing that came back to him. I directed with my back to the congregation, the way I have for thirty years, and so I didn't see it. Sister Pryor told me after. She said that on the chorus, Calvin sang. Out loud, from the wheelchair, every word. This is my story, this is my song. A man who cannot yet say my name, and he sang every word.

I didn't see it. I heard it, though. I just didn't know it was him. I thought it was the Lord being generous with the acoustics.

We had dinner after in the fellowship hall. Chicken and dressing, greens, three kinds of pound cake. Calvin ate his whole plate with his left hand and his right hand in his lap, and people came by one at a time and held his shoulder. I sat by him. I did not direct anything. That is the first time in thirty years I sat at an anniversary dinner and didn't jump up to fix something.

I don't know what comes next for the pulpit. I don't know how much more will come back to him. I do know what I heard.

Friday, September 17, 1999
Hymn for today: "It Is Well with My Soul"

Calvin came home today.

The men of the church built a ramp up to our back door on Saturday. Eleven men, one ramp, and four hours of arguing about whether it needed a rail on both sides. It has a rail on both sides. The hospital bed is in the den where the couch used to be, facing the window so he can see the pecan tree. He walks a little with the four-footed cane and the therapist's belt around his waist, and he is so stubborn about it that I have to leave the room.

His words come slow. He has "yes," "no," "Lord," and "coffee." He had "coffee" the first week. Of course he did. He calls me "Baby" sometimes, which he did anyway, so I can't tell if it's a word or a habit. I'll take either one.

Tonight I was washing up and singing, not thinking, "When peace like a river attendeth my way." And from the den I heard him come in on the chorus. It is well, it is well with my soul. I stood at the sink with my hands in the dishwater and I told the Lord I was sorry for Sunday. Not sorry I said it. Sorry I thought He wasn't listening.

Wednesday, September 15, 1999

I went to prayer meeting tonight. I did not feel like it. I went. We prayed for the people on the coast in the path of the hurricane, all those families on the highways, and I found it was easier to pray for strangers than for myself. Maybe that's how you get back in. Through the side door.

Sunday, September 12, 1999

I did not go to church today. That is the first Sunday I have missed in eleven years that was not a funeral out of town.

I sat at the kitchen table in my housecoat, at the same table, in Calvin's chair, and I had it out with God. I am going to write it down because I promised to tell the truth on this page, and because somebody out there reading is angry too and thinks she is the only one.

I said, Lord, I have sung Your praises since I was six years old in a white dress. I gave You my Sundays, my Wednesdays, my voice and my husband. He has buried Your people and married them and sat up with them in the hospital at three in the morning, and this is what You give him? A man who preached forty-five minutes without a note, and now he can't ask for the salt?

I said, How long. That's in the Bible, you know. Psalm 13. How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? David said it. So I said it too.

I didn't hear anything back. I didn't expect to. I made grits and ate them standing up. Sister Odom called at one o'clock to ask if I was sick, and I said yes, and it wasn't a lie.

Sunday, September 5, 1999

We had a guest preacher today, a young man from a church over in Orange Mound, very gifted, very sure of himself. His text was Job. Of course it was. He preached fifty minutes, walked the center aisle the way Calvin does, and wiped his face with a white handkerchief the way Calvin does, and I sat in the choir stand and hated him a little bit for it, Lord forgive me. The church liked him. Some of them liked him too much, if you ask me, which nobody did.

After service, the chairman of the deacon board, Deacon Hubbard, asked if he could "have a word" in the pastor's study. He said the board was praying for Calvin. He said the board also had to "think about the future of the pulpit." He said it gently. I will give him that.

I said, Deacon, my husband has been in rehab for ten days and you are already measuring his chair? He said that isn't what he meant. I said I know exactly what you meant, and I know you mean well, and I'd like you to go on home now. And he did.

He is not wrong. That is the part that I can't forgive yet. He is not wrong.

Thursday, August 26, 1999
Hymn for today: "Blessed Assurance"

Calvin moved from the hospital to the rehabilitation hospital this week. He does therapy three times a day: one lady for his arm and his hand, one for his walking, and a speech therapist, a young woman named Miss Carter who can't be more than twenty-five and who is, as far as I'm concerned, an angel with a clipboard.

The stroke was on the left side of his brain, so his right side is weak and the words are the hardest. He knows what he wants to say. You can see it in his eyes, the whole sermon standing there behind them. It just won't come out the door.

Today Miss Carter asked me if he had a favorite song. I said, "Blessed Assurance." She asked me to start singing it. So I sat on the edge of that hospital bed and sang, "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine," and Calvin opened his mouth and sang with me. O what a foretaste of glory divine. Every word, clear as a bell, the man who couldn't tell the nurse his own name that morning.

Miss Carter said this happens sometimes. The singing lives in a different part of the brain than the talking. She said they can use it, build on it. I said, Baby, I've been telling people for thirty years that singing is its own kind of speaking. I just didn't know it was medical.

Sunday, August 15, 1999

My first Sunday in the choir stand with nobody in the pulpit chair. Deacon Hubbard read the Scripture and the associate minister preached. I directed the choir the way I always do, with my back to the church, and I was glad of it for once, because nobody could see my face.

Since the stroke the church has brought enough food to feed the Tennessee Titans. I have eleven pound cakes. Sister Odom's is the one you want. Sister Pryor also brought a pound cake, and I thanked her kindly, and that is all I'm going to say about that.

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Psalm 30. I have been waiting on the morning for thirteen days.

Monday, August 9, 1999

One week ago this morning Calvin was reading the paper at the kitchen table and drinking his coffee, and he said something to me that didn't make any sense, and his cup went over. I knew. I don't know how I knew. I called for the ambulance and I held his hand and I sang to him in the kitchen until the ambulance came, and I don't even remember what I sang. Darnell says it was "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." I'll take his word for it.

He was in intensive care for three days. The doctors say he will live. They say they can't tell us yet how much will come back.

We have been married thirty-eight years. I have never once in thirty-eight years had to finish his sentences for him. Now I sit by his bed and he looks at me and I try.

Thank you to everybody who has written. A lady in Ohio whose husband had his stroke two years ago wrote me three pages, and I read them to Calvin, and he cried, and so did I. If you would like to know when I write again, send me a note and Darnell will put you on the list. He tells me it is no trouble. He is a good boy.

Write to me: [email protected]