Diary Seven
Patty Sessions must have possessed an unusual sense of history and the importance of one life. She began yet another record book, perhaps in 1884, since that is when her diary entries begin, but she included many other records, as well. She logged the dates of her reminiscences patriarchal blessings, numerous pages of genealogical information, and minutes of the Benevolent Society of the sixteenth ward, and wrote everything carefully in her own hand. Perhaps she realized some of her diaries were missing and wanted to fill in the gap. Her daily inscriptions had become such a habit that she continued at her advanced age to write a few words when she really didn't have anything to say, except repetitious accounts of what handiwork she was diligently accomplishing.
Nevertheless, there is something compelling about such persistence. She persisted well into her nineties. She made scores of rugs, cleaned snow off her house, cleared trees from her orchard, knitted, colored fabric, dug sage, weeded and worked the ground, and cut and dried fruit. But she gradually declined in health, dexterity, and mental acuity. We witness the winding down of a life in dramatic and touching ways. Readers may not be prepared for that experience, even as human beings are seldom prepared for the slowing of their own lives, a universal condition that makes Patty's heroic efforts to maintain productiveness particularly touching.
Will and Ariel Durant expressed a thought that may further explain Patty's painstaking record keeping:
"If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life. If progress is real it is not because we are born any healthier, better, or wiser than infants were in the past, but because we are born to a richer heritage."
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