Ruth Noyes

In Loving Memory

Ruth Noyes

We understand death each time it touches one we care about, and so it was with me. In a moment in time, my friend, this most decent woman, slipped away last week into the eternal silence as easily as twilight fades into night.

Life was not kind to her. She died poor, but maintained her dignity to the end. When she knew the end was near she said to me there's something I want to read you-something I want you to know: "When we are weary-when the sun touches the horizon and the pulse is faint-when eyes grow dim and muscles fail to obey the will-when we wish for the twilight, for the dusk, for the cool kisses of the night, it's time to go. When mists gather on the mirror of memory-when the past is almost forgotten, the present hardly perceived-when the future has but empty hands, it's time to go. And when the lilacs of May and the scent of honeysuckle on a June night no longer excite the senses, and the radiance of a lady slipper has lost its charm-it's time to go. And when the old oak is visited in vein by spring, it is not well to stand leafless, desolate and alone-it is time to go!"

She then told me not to grieve when she's gone because she'll have an afterlife in the memories of those who loved her, then said. "I hope for no more. I ask for no more!"

A few days later she was gone, and now is part of nature's wealth. Though our time together in the sun was brief, how sweet it was, and there will remain a place in my heart that will forever belong to her alone. No person ever had a better friend-how lucky I was to known her. Her name was Ruth Noyes.

Borden Applegate