As it's Cristmas I've been thinking of my loved ones and friend's who are still JW'sand then I thought about Ruth and how she is forrgotten so I wrote this for her. The best friend I ever had.
Ruth was a Jehovah’s Witness just as I was and even in my oldest memories of her she was old. Not surprising since when I was sixteen she was in her late eighty’s. Ruth was always there with a smiling face and a warm hug and a hot-chocolate on a cold day. Ruth didn’t grow up in Australia and to me as a child this filled me with a sense of awe that she had come with her husband from a place I had only ever heard about a place called Holland. Where it snowed! I’d never seen snow! Sadly this is all I know of her early life that she was from Holland and she came over here with her husband at some point in her twenty’s. At some point after that a Jehovah’s Witness knocked on her door and she (the kind person she was) invited them in for a cup of tea they talked she accepted a study. Her husband however did not and never would. She was baptised sometime later.
It wasn’t like Ruth to talk about herself she was always bustling about in her kitchen asking us questions about school and the bible and offering us more cake. On the rare occasion she did talk about herself it was always about her first years in Australia or her husband who had died years before. Ruth and her Husband never had children I don’t know why she was a wonderful Women she would have made an equally wonderful mother. She liked nothing more than to give us kids little presents she seamed as happy with giving us the present as we were at receiving it as a Jehovah’s witness child your schooled with the often repeated line “we don’t have wait to give our children presents on special occasions we can give them presents all year round” unforgivably this is not the case. So you can imagine how elated we were to receive Ruth’s gifts.
The Book-study was held in Ruth’s kitchen we would all pile in about twelve of us. Kids sitting on cushions on the floor adults on chairs. It’s not so much the book’s I remember as her kitchen always smelled wonderful not just food but flowers and another smell I cant really name after the study we got to have biscuits or if it was summer icy-poles and then all us kids would go tease the fish in her pond. While the adults sat around drinking tea and talking.
As she got older the house and garden became too much for her to handle and she was no longer able to stay in her own home and moved into a nursing home. I don’t think she liked it there but she bore it with the dignity and humour she bore everything else with and it didn’t change her attitude toward us. It became part of our routine to leave home early so we could pick her up for the meeting and no matter what she always greeted us with a big smile on her face.
As I got older my awe of Ruth slowly and without me noticing morphed into respect you see Ruth wasn’t your average sister. To those unschooled in the Jehovah’s Witness religion women are subservient to men and even some higher ranking teen boys (as long as there baptised). Women can’t hold any role in the organisation not even wind the microphone cords. But Ruth had been a Jehovah’s witness for so long at this point she had an almost encyclopaedic memory of Jehovah’s witnesses doctrine and history and she wasn’t going to be subservient to a man whose bottom she had wiped as a child. The great part is any new elder who came in to challenge this position was sternly but kindly put in his place not just by her but the other Jehovah’s witnesses as well (I think our cong was small enough to allow this). No intelligent man would be stupid enough to make that mistake twice. Hence Ruth went from being the women I was in awe of to the women I want to BE smart, reliable and above all kind. Therefore whenever I had a question about something I hadn’t understood Ruth was who I went to elders be buggered I could get clearer and better information from Ruth. Ruth took nothing a face value she studied hard and understood the smallest nuances of her chosen religion and I noticed as I got older Ruth didn’t talk about the organisation or the governing body of elders. Ruth talked about God and the bible. When I got my licence I started visiting Ruth in the home by myself we wouldn’t always talk about religion sometimes I would just sit and read to her from a novel or the newspaper (her eyesight went towards the end) and at other times we would talk about the bible and god.
So when I started having doubts about my religion she was the obvious place to go and when I told her I had doubts instead of judging me she asked me a series of very specific questions and at the end of our discussion recommended I not only study watchtower literature but secular scientific and archaeological literature too and that’s what I did for over a year without my mother or anyone else knowing I studied and studied and studied every chance I got any book or magazine I could find. I read the “origin of species” any scientific book I could get hold of and at the end I found some lie’s that is simply could not live with in my religion and I made my decision this religion any religion based on faith that could not be backed up with facts was not the PLACE for me.
Unfortunately the worst also happened during this year Ruth died and with that my best friend and confidant was gone to. Ruth left at the worst possible time (for me) and I had to tell my mother the truth alone “I wont be going to meetings anymore” it ’ s amazing how a few words can blow up into a month long argument about turning me back on god and my “real” friends. My mother and I argued for some time about my choice to stop going meetings and the more we argued the more I made up my mind I was not going to do what she wanted. In her mind I was going back weather I liked it or not! The thing that irked me the most was mum had obviously decided that I’d made this decision without due consideration like I was giving up my religion and friends on a whim. When I had agonised and researched for over a year before I had made a major and final decision.
I sometimes wonder if Ruth knew what conclusion of my research would be and if she would have been OK with my decision the truth is I will never know and it’s not worth the trouble of worrying about.
I miss Ruth she was the kind of person you could talk to about everything from the weather to god she was my best friend. I really believe it was a privilege knowing her and learning from her.
RIP RUTH
