It’s About Time — To Do The Favor Asked of Me
A Better Late Than Never Story
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
This phrase has been around for a long time, much longer than my years on life. But my memories of this phrase date back to 1969. My dad was being transferred to a job in Toledo, Ohio, from Glendora, California, where I was born and raised.
Being an 11-year-old girl at the time, I ran around with something that was popular then. An autograph book. I doubt I’ve seen an autograph book for many, many years. Are they still a thing?
But it was an ‘in’ thing then. So I kept it in on me and asked everyone I knew to sign it. Friends at school. Teachers. Neighbors. And of course, all the family that lived in town. Aunts and uncles, cousins, and my grandparents.
I can’t tell you who all signed it or what they said. But what I can tell you, over 50 years later, is what Grandma Jones wrote in my autograph book. I can still picture her tight, cramped handwriting:
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Grandma Jones
Why would that stand out in my mind? Why would she even write that to her young granddaughter? I have no idea.
But I think what made such an impression on me was that Grandma Jones never said ‘that’ word. She always spelled it out. ‘H’…’E’….’Double toothpicks’. That’s what she called it. She never would speak the name of the Devil’s place of abode.
But in 1969 she WROTE the word in my autograph book!
I think that was so momentous to me that in ingrained her autograph into my brain.
Usually, years go by without me even thinking of this memory. But every now and then, something stirs this memory close to the surface. Like something I ran across last week.
Here we are in the early part of August, and I’m finally starting to sort through the piles that have taken over my office, multiplying like rabid rabbits. Three years of increasingly more hands on caregiving as my Better Half battled cancer, took more and more of my time and energy. My writing time and my organized office space were the losers in the deal.
Last week I picked up a stack of cards sitting off to the side to sort through them. They were Christmas cards! Eight months later I was finally deciding what to do with the Christmas cards that came our way and got shoved to the side as the cancer battle raged on the home front.
One from the stack caught my eye.
I didn’t recognize the last name on the envelope, nor the city in Florida where it came from.
But when took the card out of the envelope, it all came back to me.
It was from an author that had featured one of my books on her blog!
And she’d asked a favor in this Christmas card.
Her one request was one I intended to follow through on.
Unfortunately, it was one that I’d tucked aside and forgotten about. I’d never done it.
And Grandma Jones’ words came floating to the surface of my mind.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
I had good intentions. I just never did do the follow-through to make it happen.
Christal Ann Rice Cooper interviewed me for her blog, THE MAGNIFICATION OF ONE MEMORY IN MEMOIR, which was published in May 2022. Christal focuses a lot of her work on memoir and she had asked some questions about one of the anthologies I published in 2018, Mothers of Angels: Living and Loving after the Death of a Child.
Christal’s blog post is here if you want to know more about how losing my step-son to cancer turned into this anthology many years later, and some of my reflections on writing about the difficult moments.
In Christal’s Christmas card, she’d sent a request to write someone an uplifting message. She’d even enclosed a card and stamped envelope.
I intended to follow through with her request.
But I put her card in the stack, along with the others we received, and didn’t look at them again for eight months.
But you know what?
It’s not too late.
I can still do it.
I can still do the one small favor she’d asked of me.
I can still write someone an encouraging note.
And to make up for being late, I’m going to up the ante. I’m going to send two cards out. One of them is going to head in Christal’s direction.
Sometimes some things can be done ‘Better Late Than Never!’
But you know what? Now that I’m thinking about this, I think I’m going to do this too. In my Christmas cards this year, I’m going do the same. I’ll add a note and some stamped envelopes to my cards. We’ll keep this chain going, spreading kind words and encouragement about.
Who knows how far these ripples can travel? Even if they do sit on desks and shelves for months before they get sent off, we never know whose lives we’ll brighten with these unexpected words of care.