The Table She Set Anyway

On the evening the bank foreclosed on her farm outside Salina, Kansas, Ruth Meyers set the dinner table. White plates on a pressed cloth. Two forks, two knives — one place for herself, one left empty where Dale had sat before pancreatic cancer took him nineteen months earlier.

The cattle had been auctioned in October. The wheat fields hadn't turned a profit in three seasons. The savings account showed eleven dollars. Her daughter in Wichita had begged her to come stay, but Ruth wasn't ready to leave.

She heated a can of soup, sat down, bowed her head, and said grace. Not a hurried grace. A long one. She thanked the Almighty for forty-one years on that land. She thanked Him for the sound of meadowlarks outside the window. She thanked Him for Dale, for her daughter, for the way February sunlight fell across the kitchen floor.

Her neighbor Jim Patton heard about it later and shook his head. "I'd have been cursing God," he admitted.