In a quiet hollow of the wooded hills outside of Charleston, West Virginia, called Cuckleburr Creek, Margaret Marie Adkins took her place on October 7, 1921 as the eleventh child born to Andrew Jackson Adkins and Mary Frances Horton. Later she would bring her husband and two sons to experience the goodness of simple living, surrounded by countless aunts, uncles and cousins who cared deeply for one another, and who showed it easily, as Mom had learned to do as a child. West Virginia brought her to us, and Pennsylvania and Louisiana enjoyed her for a time, but most of her life was spent in southern California.
A devoted wife through thick and thin, a strong yet loving help to her two boys, and a doting grandmother and great grandmother, Margaret lived each and every day with kindness, as though an angel of the Lord was watching her...or perhaps she herself was an angel.
A woman who had no enemies, even when people treated her poorly, Margaret rose from being orphaned at a young age, to being cherished by all who knew her. Of gentle spirit and temperament, she took every breath with the idea firmly in mind, that patience and trust and faith toward others was goodness. That was the way she wanted life to be for people on earth. As Christmas approaches, her eyes yet twinkle in my mind like an ornament on the tree, and I think of the many ways in which she embodied her faith and Christianity so much more than preached it.
On December 6, 2006, in Lancaster, California, the gentle soul my brother and I knew as our mother passed quietly away from her family here on earth to be with our father and her late husband, Wilson Wade Couch, who had gone to heaven ahead of her over nine years earlier. From California to Florida, her family across the country forever remember her sweet smile and gentle way and how she walked through this world. -Doug Couch