CARLTON FLETCHER: Whatever Heaven may be, Miss Ginny’s there

Oh they tell me of a land far beyond the skies, Oh they tell of a home far away. Oh they tell me of a place where no storm clouds rise, Oh they tell me of an uncloudy day.

— Don Henley (traditional)

There are two things I knew without question about Miss Geneva “Ginny” Hayman, who passed away Monday after an extended and brave battle for life that inspired those of us who knew her.

First — and, yes, this part is personal — she loved me. We knew each other casually before Mary Braswell and I sat down with Miss Ginny and some of the other members of her church to talk about a program she helped initiate. It didn’t take long to figure out that she was a force of nature.

We had a number of talks after that, Miss Ginny and I, and after each one I felt that I had been in the presence of grace. It always made me laugh — and, obviously, pleased me — when she’d bring up stuff people had said about me in this newspaper’s Squawkbox feature. The more she talked, the more animated she got.

“Those people don’t know you; who are they to say these things?” she’d say. She’d usually end her tirade with something like, “You let one of those people say something about you in front of me. I’ll set them straight.”

I tried to tell her that, first of all, I wasn’t overly concerned about anonymous shots directed at me, most by people who only knew me through the things I write in this paper. I also told her that she should save her energy for people and causes that were more worthy of her time. When I told her that many times I was deserving of others’ ire, she would have none of it.

“I know your heart,” she told me, and that always touched me.

The second thing I know about Miss Ginny is that she loved God. Not in that way so many “Christians” do nowadays … go to church on Sundays, throw a few bucks in the collection plate, then go out and check off each of the 10 Commandments as you break them. No, Miss Ginny truly had God in her heart.

About a month before she died, B.J. Fletcher and I visited Miss Ginny at her home. She said God had laid some things on her heart, and she wanted to talk about them with me. I certainly thought any Heavenly Father would want a better vessel to share Miss Ginny’s vision with the world, but she insisted I was the one she wanted to talk with.

So I went.

Miss Ginny was frail when B.J. and I visited. She’d only recently started to mend from an illness that had taken her to the brink of death, and her voice, already rendered raspy — she said from her health issues, but I kidded her that it was from her talking so much — was a hoarse whisper. But as she talked that evening, her strength grew with her words.

What Ginny Hayman wanted to do, what she worked through with God as she lay immobilized in her sick bed, was a series of life lessons that she felt compelled to share. She lamented the societal ills that had consumed not just our community but the entire country, and she assured me that her ideas came from privileged, one-on-one conversations she’d had with God.

One of the things she said that struck me most was, “We wanted God out of our schools, and we wanted God out of our daily lives. What’s happening to our community and to our country right now is God is granting us what we wanted.”

Miss Ginny and I were going to get together and talk about her vision as time allowed. We came up with various ways to share the things that God had laid on her heart, and we came up with a timeframe to meet and talk. Alas, now that plan is moot, as Miss Ginny has taken her vision to a better place.

When Fletcher called me to tell me that Miss Ginny had passed away, she said, “I have no doubt that she’s in Heaven now, preparing a place for us.” That’s a comforting notion.

Certainly with the various religions that have sprung up around us — each with its leaders’ own complex, and, let’s face it, often self-serving, interpretation of what in many cases are simple words — there is plenty of speculation about the journeys of souls in the afterlife. All I’m sure of is that, whatever Heaven may actually be, Miss Ginny Hayman is there right now, her earthly mission accomplished.