A Wedding Quilt for Ella by Jerry S. Eicher Read Free Book Online Page B

love. And they would have but for the rules. Now, it would never be possible. Soon they would bury his body and throw dirt on his brown wooden casket. The image was too awful to imagine, and she almost cried out.
    No, I can’t think that. Stop it. He’s not dead at all.
    Yet she was now going to where she would see for herself that Aden was dead. That dreaded moment lay ahead. It would be an awful moment of beholding his face frozen in death, his eyes forever closed, his lips hard, and his arms frigid and unable to ever move again. Why did God so abruptly, with no attempt to warn me, take him away? The question would not let her go.
    “Why was I not allowed to marry Aden?” she whispered. The words came from tense lips that already knew the answer, yet the words must be said or something inside of her would surely break.
    Her dad’s head turned slightly, but he said nothing.
    He heard me. “We had wanted to marry a long time ago,” she said, loud enough for her parents to surely hear. “You knew that. Why couldn’t we have been married then? I’d have his child with me now. Wouldn’t that be better than this?”
    “There is no answer to this,” her dad said, turning his head to look at her.
    Tears swam in his blue eyes. Ella’s cries filled the buggy, rang in her ears. The pain was simply too much. Her people and her God had failed her—had left her alone.
    Mamm reached back and gently gripped her shoulder. “We do what we know is best, and God decides from there. Even if you had been married to Aden, it still would have hurt this much—even more perhaps.”
    “I would then have had his child,” Ella cried.
    “Yah, this could be true,” Daett said, “but we do not know. There are many, even among our people, who have no children. We can only know what is now, what happens this day, and what Da Hah has given. It is best you accept what His hand gives, even the sorrow.”
    “Yah,” her mother said, “your daett knows what he speaks of.”
    “I only know how much I miss Aden,” Ella said. “Why would God take him from me?”
    “Are we not from the dust of the ground,” her father answered, “frail and feeble and made by Da Hah’s hands? Such questions, it is not our place to be askin’.”
    “Yah, but I ask them,” she said, her voice resolute.
    “Then Da Hah must answer them,” he replied. “I cannot.”
    “It is a fearful thing,” Mamm said, her voice tense, “to be questioning the Almighty.”
    “Yah,” Daett said, “it is. Yet He has pity on the widows and the orphans. Da Hah knows your heart is broken. Ask of Him. Perhaps there will be an answer we know nothing of.”
    Ella settled back into the buggy seat. Yah, her father seemed to understand. Perhaps God wouldn’t judge her harshly for her questions. She wiped her hand across her face, blowing into the handkerchief. Mamm took a deep breath in the front seat.
    Daett pulled the buggy lines right at the next turn, and the gravel road rattled under the buggy wheels. They drove in silence across the open stretch of field and down the curves leading to the little creek.

     
    The stream ran with clear water. Here and there, the spots sparkled where the sun’s rays made their way through the tree branches and bounced off the ripples. Aden and she had stopped here many times on a Sunday afternoon, tied the horse to a tree, and walked along the banks.
    Aden would take her hand as they talked about the future. Lately it had been the wedding, but Aden had once asked her, “Would it be too much for you if I were ever to be ordained a minister?”
    “You…a minister?” She asked, knowing her face had registered the surprise. “You should not speak of such things. Is not the lot a sacred thing?”
    He had laughed and answered, “Yes. And I do not desire it, nor am I looking for it. I just have this feeling sometimes. Like I hear my name called out by the bishop who says I’ve got the three votes. Then I walk up front to pick out the