The years went by. Mike and I got married in 2004. Ruth sat in the front pew. She made our wedding cake herself, three tiers, lemon with buttercream, because she’d heard me say once that lemon was my favorite.
We had Sam in 2006. Emma in 2009. Lily, our surprise, in 2023.
Every Christmas Eve, I stood in Ruth’s kitchen with the women of the family and rolled lefse. Ruth taught me herself. The first year, my rounds came out like maps of Wisconsin and everybody laughed. By the fifth year, I was the fastest roller in the kitchen. Ruth started handing the dough to me first.
When Mike’s father, Gary, got pancreatic cancer in 2014, he needed rides to Rochester. Twice a week. Two hours each way. Mike’s mother couldn’t drive anymore because of her eyes. Mike was working twelve-hour shifts at the plant. His brother Tom lived in North Dakota.
I quit my part-time job at the clinic and drove him.
Eight months. Sixty-four round trips. I sat in the waiting room of the Mayo Clinic for so many hours that the receptionist learned my name and started saving me the good chair by the window.
Gary died in March of 2015.
Steve, Dana’s dad, came to the funeral. He hadn’t come to Rochester once.
In 2016, Harold got sick. Heart failure. He went into the nursing home in Lake Crystal in September. Ruth was there every day. But Ruth was eighty and couldn’t drive at night.
So I went at night.
I’d put the kids to bed, and I’d drive the twenty minutes to the nursing home, and I’d sit with Harold from eight until ten. I’d read him the Mankato Free Press. The farm prices. The obituaries. He always wanted the obituaries. He’d tell me who everybody was.
On the night of November 9, 2016, I was sitting with him when his breathing changed.
I called Ruth. I called the nurse. I held his hand.
He looked at me once, right before.
“Jenny,” he said. He was the only person who ever called me Jenny. “You tell Ruthie I said the papers are in the desk.”
“What papers, Harold?”
“She knows.”
He died about twenty minutes later. Ruth got there just in time. She held one of his hands and I held the other.
I told her what he’d said about the papers.
She just nodded and said, “I know, honey. I know.”
I never thought about it again.
Not until I was standing at a picnic table by the pump house with Ruth’s hand in mine and thirty Pedersens staring at us.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.