Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Dust: To add fine particles, or to remove them (11/13/25)
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TITLE: Nana's War | Previous Challenge Entry
By Francie Snell
11/19/25 -
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After breakfast with the kitchen dishes scrubbed to a shine, she gently placed the delicate china back in the cupboard. Then it was time for the real work to begin, when Nana went to war, which began in the living room.
In her tattered red apron she prepared herself for the first line of attack, with the most basic item in her arsenal: a dust rag, slightly moist, and strategically tucked into the front pocket of her smock.
She would grunt and moan with words I couldn’t quite make out when she spotted a dirty dish or one of grandpa’s filthy ashtrays, then snatch the rag from her pocket and subpress the ghastly sight like she was putting out a fire. ‘Disgusting’ she’d scowl and shake her head as she carried the desecration into the kitchen and place it in the sink.
To say Nana loved a clean house would be an understatement. Love? I would call it an obsession. One tell-tale sign of her preoccupation with cleanliness was her broom closet, the most abundantly equipped room in the house; an arsenal stocked high to the ceiling with just about every cleaning product a janitor could ever dream of. A portly five foot even, she bravely hoisted herself up the step ladder with the agility of an experienced rock climber. Every day she was locked and loaded, ready to take on any filth that assailed her home.
She was constantly on the prowl for anything in her house that appeared less than polished. Dust only had one place and that was outside the house or captured by a rag or paper towel and imprisoned in a waste basket.
But there were even more enemies on the horizon, ominous clouds arising from the fields around her country home, a farmland inherited and passed down through three generations of dryland farmers. “This is all part of God’s plan,you know “she’d say with a sense of contentment, as the clouds blocked out the sun. “It’s how we work the land the good Lord gave us. It really is a blessing,” she’d say and wipe her eyes. “Dust?” She’d add with flippant wave of her hand. “I’ll tell you what, if I don’t keep on top of it every day, it would grow into a mound in the living room thick enough to grow a garden in. Heck, I’m even like the dust of the earth, can’t seem to get away from it” she’d chuckle as she stirred her ham and beans on the woodstove.
But keeping a tidy house wasn’t all she did; when she wasn’t cleaning or cooking, she was doing this or that for someone in need, and always with a lightness of spirit that seemed to carry her through the day. No one conveyed appreciation and a love for God as she did.
Nana was the woman I always wanted to be.
She made my life easier with her support, away from the chaos of my own home. My mother was her daughter though they were nothing alike. Domestic chores were not my mother’s strong suite like they seemed to be for Nana. And along with cooking and cleaning, Nana also taught me the most important things in life; like how to pray and learn about the Lord.
Now, the dust on the furniture and photos on the walls declare her absence. Dust on the mantle silently chimes in as well as particles in the air move around like a reminder of a woman who no longer has to fight the battle.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” are the platitudes with which the minister began. It seems so distant from the woman I once knew. I could say a thousand eulogies that could never do justice to a life so well lived, a crown so well deserved.
But I’ll always remember that crinkly smile with light in her eyes, love and laughter living a life to its fullest, with solid assurance I will see her on the other side.
Ecclesiastes 12:7 ESV
And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
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