Henrietta Lange was old. How old, none could say. It might have been she had strayed too far from her roots. Perhaps she had simply outlasted everyone who knew for certain. But my repeated inquiries into the age of Henrietta Lange had yielded a unison response:

"Don't know. She's up there, though! Hennie's very, very old..."

So old, in fact, that she had buried three husbands and two grown children. So old that those who knew her had lost interest in her age. All had given in to the extraordinary opinion that Henrietta Lange would live forever.

Henrietta had chosen to spend eternity in a retirement center on the edge of Marquette, Indiana. She had moved there several months after having been diagnosed with an inoperable cancer – a fact she had kept to herself until shortly before the move. Secretly, she planned to settle in there and outlast the cancer. Eventually, she thought, it would simply give up and die, while she would go right on living. After all, she'd suffered nearly every ailment known to the human race already and outlived every one. Why should it be any different with cancer?

"Hennie, you've just got to give up the house!" her friends had pleaded upon learning of her condition. "You really must!" they kept on, just as she knew they would. But by then her bags were already packed. Not her friends’ ugings, but a fresh realization of mortality, had made up her mind. And not her own mortality – naturally – but that of someone else, someone dearer to her even than life itself.

Henrietta's old downtown home on the hill, just across from the university, had sold quickly. Buyers had come out in droves. Henrietta had no problem disposing of her many fine Victorian collectibles, either. Some of the best pieces had gone to their vocal admirers through the years whose names had ended up on scraps of paper, taped to their undersides. The rest were sold in parcels to dealers, thrilled to get their hands on some choice specimens from the dwindling supply of Victoriana.

In a twist of fate, one piece had even found its way down the road to our quiet grove and through the doors of Ashgrove Baptist Church. On a quiet Friday afternoon, Herb Chestnut's El Camino had pulled into the gravel drive and backed up to the church entrance. Standing in the vestibule, I watched it slide off the edge of the tailgate and onto the grass: a mahogany library table in church Gothic. It was love at first sight. In a sudden impulse of generosity, I ran to Herb's aid, and together we hoisted it into the building.

"Where do you suppose it should go?" asked Herb, pulling to the right, "Fellowship Hall probably?"

"Let's think about this!" I suggested, heaving as best I could back the other way, back toward the pastor's study. "We mustn't be hasty. There are a lot of options, you know."

At last, the table came to rest against the wall of the vestibule. I studied it eagerly, as Herb watched in amusement. Trefoils, three-fold leaf designs, were deep carved into each corner. Elegant rectilinear shapes were incised down each table leg. And hanging down from the table top on three sides were inverted gables. Each one came to a point and was capped in a teardrop ball. On the front side was a single drawer with two brass pulls. The drawer was locked shut.

"Where's the key?" I asked.

"Hmmm," answered Herb. "Didn't notice that. Have to ask Hennie next time I see her!"

"Hennie who?" I asked.

"Why, Henrietta Lange, of course!"

"I didn’t know," I told Harold Hatch. We were discussing my earlier conversation with Herb. "Not a soul ever told me about her!" I complained. "Why isn't she on the shut-in list?"

Harold smiled. "She's old," he said. "Very old. Why, I'd wager she's as old as that oak tree there," he said, pointing to a shady burr oak south of the building.

"But that's impossible!" I objected. "That tree's huge, way over a hundred years old!" Harold glanced at the tree again, then back at me, shrugging his shoulders as if in ironic assent to the opinion. "Hennie's old," he picked up again, "but she's no shut-in."

Harold then filled me in on the little he knew of Henrietta Lange's ties to Ashgrove Church. She had come from New Jersey in the mid-1920s, during the pastorate of Wilkes Cobb. After the death of her first husband, she had moved to Marquette, remarried, and raised her two sons. But Henrietta had kept in touch across the decades, attending the funerals of old-time friends, receiving in turn the mourners of the church at the deaths of her husbands and sons, and writing a nice check each December for the ongoing work of ministry.

"Why don't you go visit her sometime?" Harold suggested. "You could see for yourself, ask her about that missing key, maybe even learn a thing or two – Hennie's full of surprises."

The Forest Green Retirement Center sat on the northern edge of the city of Marquette, surrounded by open field earmarked for a new housing development. Bulldozers dotted the landscape. Except for a few old hardwoods on facility grounds, there was scarcely a tree in sight. A large sign identified the facility. It shot up from a giant mound of impatiens, slated to die in the approaching autumn. The setting itself spoke a heavy message of the impermanence of things. But as if to remove every last doubt, a smaller sign sat next to the larger one. It read Heaven's Gate – Hospice Care.

I parked, entered a large new atrium, and approached a woman at the information center.

"I'm looking for a Mrs. Lange," I said. "Henrietta Lange."

"Ah, Dr. Lange! Straight down that hall," she pointed, "then the first right. Room 128. You can try her there, but she may already be on rounds."

"No, there must be a mistake," I said. "I'm looking for a resident, not a doctor. She only moved here recently."

"Well, Dr. Lange has only lived here for a brief time, but she's been working here as long as I can remember. Henrietta Lange is one of our staff physicians."

Room 128 lay along a freshly carpeted corridor of the facility's Williamsburg Wing. Wall sconces lit the way and reproduction paintings hung over striped wallpaper above chair-rail and wainscoting. Up and down the hallway, doors with brass nameplates were tightly shut. The door to one room only stood open. It was 128, and as I approached it, I heard humming. I stopped and peeked around the corner into a room, spacious yet cluttered with over-sized furniture. Everywhere, on tables, chairs, an ottoman, the floor itself, were open journals and books.

Henrietta was poring over one of these with thick glasses and a look of immense concentration, while still the refrain of a hymn tune escaped from her taut lips. It was a melody I might well have recognized, had I not been casting about for a way to announce my presence. But Henrietta had saved me the trouble.

"Come on in, young man!" she said, not even looking up. "Lost, are you?"

I told her who I was and of the Ashgrove connection. Then I thanked her profusely for the library table.

"That old thing!" she said. "Been in the family forever."

We visited briefly, speaking of old times at the church and of my current ministry there. I was poised to broach the subject of the missing key when Henrietta's grandfather clock struck the hour, and Henrietta rose up with the fury of a jack-in-a-box. Firmly grabbing hold of her walker on wheels, she said, "Ten O'clock! Gotta go! Time for morning rounds."

"Mmmm," I said.

"Otherwise I'd stay and visit some more."

"Maybe I'll follow along a bit if that's all right."

"Suit yourself," she said.

With that, Henrietta lumbered down the hall, out of the Williamsburg Wing and into a plainer one dubbed Jamestown, stopping in at several rooms to see elderly patients in various stages of wellness and illness. She greeted each one with soft words of cheer and comfort. She studied charts, took vital signs, listened to chests. Her stethoscope hung from the top bar of her walker, its diaphragm dangling down nearly to the floor. She would insert the earpiece and press the diaphragm to her patient's back or chest, and say, "Cough!" and her patient would cough. And when the effort didn't pass muster, she would add, "Now, cough like you mean business!" Occasionally, she would turn the end over to the bell side and listen awhile with it. "That's for deep tones," she explained.

At the close of each visit, Henrietta opened a pouch, fastened to the walker, and pulled out a handful of bite-size candy bars. "Milky Way, Butterfinger or Snickers?" she would ask. With a smile, sometimes even a giggle of guilt, they would make their choice. And when patients said, "None, thank you," then Dr. Henrietta Lange would choose one for them, adding, "Here. Give it away to visitors. They'll come back sooner that way!"

"I'm the candy lady!" she cackled, maneuvering left toward a different wing of the facility. Newly installed automatic doors opened upon our approach. A young cry was audible from a room halfway down the hall. Above the entrance was the same discomfiting sign I had noted upon arrival: Heaven's Gate, it said. Hospice Care.

Henrietta followed the cry to the exclusion of all else. We bypassed several rooms where pairs of young wide eyes stared out anxiously for the source of the sound of feet and wheels which had come to mean one unmistakable thing: chocolate. But Henrietta continued on. Her ancient face strained now for the first time, not with her own pain but with that of a newborn anguish. At last she stopped at a door, slightly ajar. At eye level, in place of a brass nameplate, was the metal track for a less permanent kind -- the sort that can be slid easily in and easily out again. A piece of cardboard had been inserted there, bearing a name in black ink. It read Banks, William.

Henrietta lowered her head and rapped her bony knuckles on wood. Moments later a nurse peeped her head out.

"Oh, Dr. Lange!" she said. "Just a moment!" The nurse disappeared back into the dark room and, after a pause, a woman in her mid-thirties emerged from out of the shadows. Her face was long and drawn and her hair was disheveled. Her eyes were deep-set and encircled by streaks of gray like a raccoon's. But she broke into an easy smile at the sight of Henrietta.

"Hi, Hennie!" she said sleepily.

"Oh, child! You and Willie have been on my mind all night! I won't disturb you further now, but just know that I'm with you!"

"No, it's all right. Really. I think he'd like to see you."

With that, the door opened wide. Henrietta introduced me to Teresa Banks, William Bank's mother, as two nurses left the room. Inside, all was dark and, finally, still. "Just like the night before," whispered Teresa. "He finally slept good somewhere in the middle of the night, but woke up this morning all hurting and distressed. We changed his bed and 'jamas, and after awhile he calmed down again." Henrietta nodded. Then, taking my hand, she led me to the bedside.

There, I beheld a small boy, no older than five. He was smothered in blankets. His face was gaunt, bloodless. His eyes were tightly shut, but the moment Henrietta called his name, they opened alertly.

"Hi, my little one!" she said, "Hi, my sweet!" I watched her study him, check his chart, take his pulse, feel his swollen glands. She asked him simple questions to which he nodded yes or shook no, his bloodshot eyes never once abandoning their plaintive gaze into hers. And when she put the stethoscope to his bare chest, it was more the bell, less the diaphragm. It was deep tones she sought. There was something more here, something well beyond any doctor-patient situation. A kind of energy passed between them, bridging the chasm of years, naming them together, here and now and always. Then, all at once, I recognized it. It was clear as her bell. It was love.

"This is Willie," she said. "And he's my boy!"

"Glad to meet you, Willie!" I said. And I smiled through the sadness of it.

Back in room 128, Henrietta told me Willie's story. The Banks family were long-time patients of hers. She had delivered Teresa and her brothers, as she had their mother before them, not to mention "half the town of Marquette," as the joke went. But there was a further connection between them. Henrietta's second husband had been Teresa's great uncle. Having no grandchildren of her own, Henrietta had welcomed each of the Bankses permanently into her heart, even beyond the deaths of her second and third husbands. When Willie was stricken ill, she had ached as if he had proceeded right from her own womb.

"Nobody knows this but me – and now you," Henrietta confided. "I gave up my house and moved here for one reason: to be near Willie and his mother and father. Willie has a rare form of leukemia. We've battled it since just after he was born. There’s nothing more to be done. If and when he dies, I intend to be close beside him – all the way," she said. And the words had a strange but familiar ring to them. "Just as I hope to be here for all my patients," she continued, "and I can't count on that anymore – short of living here myself."

Then, Henrietta made tea. She boiled water, prepared the tea bags, and set out cream and sugar. As she worked, Dr. Henrietta Lange had begun once again to hum, and this time I had listened. Soon her tune evoked words well-known, words that I realized had been stealing into my consciousness all morning long, through talk of little ones and staying close beside, all the way, and, of course, the ominous Heaven's Gate sign.

"You like that hymn, don't you," I said.

"Jesus Loves Me? Why it's my favorite, can't you tell?"

"I thought of it when I saw the name of the hospice unit: Heaven's Gate."

"Chose the name myself," Henrietta replied. "Elder's prerogative, you know!"

"But, isn't it a little," I started, "I mean, doesn't it...Don't people get a bit, you know, put off by it," I managed, “a little scared?"

"Oh, I don't know," she mused. "Something scary about heaven?...When I was quite young," Henrietta continued, "I read the book! It was a poem first, you know. A man in the story recited it to a little boy named Johnny. Johnny was dying. The man spoke these words:

"Don't recall hearing that verse before," I commented.

"Say and Seal was the title, I believe. It was a gift of my Uncle Frank's. He was a West Pointer. Brought it to me on my tenth birthday, signed by Anna Warner and all! Of course, we grew up singing it, too!"

Suddenly, the grandfather clock struck noon. It was time for me to go. I finished my tea and thanked Henrietta again for her hospitality. I was nearly out the door when Henrietta called me back. "Wait a minute, young man!" she said. "Milky Way, Butterfinger or Snickers?"

"Snickers! – It's my favorite!" And I said it with all the feeling of a beloved patient – even a son.

Willie Banks hung on only a pair of months longer. Word of his death came to us early on a Sunday morning, and so we had broken our worship routine to accommodate a time of prayer. We prayed for Willie's family, for their strength and understanding. We thanked God for the blessing of life while we have it and the end of pain when it is gone; we extolled the spirit of an ageless aunt of endless love; and we concluded worship with a hymn, a word of sweet consolation – Hennie's hymn, “Jesus Loves Me.”

The day of Willie's funeral, the Hatches, Chestnuts, and I drove the hour north to celebrate the love of Jesus in Willie's life one last time. At the memorial service, confined to a wheelchair, was a now frail Henrietta Lange. She had given up her apartment in the Williamsburg Wing and moved quietly down the hall into Heaven's Gate. Her pain of body and spirit was of double strength that day, but her eyes had lost none of their penetrating intensity. Holding fast Teresa's hand, she followed every spoken word, nodding often. With her free hand she dabbed the tears from her eyes, reaching over now and then to do the same for Teresa. And she sang all the words to all three hymns, saving up her best for the last of them, chosen again of seeming necessity:

At the end of the service, we stood in a long line to greet her. At my approach, Henrietta threw up her arms to offer me an embrace. "Hello again, young man!" she said. She gazed intently into my eyes. "A little child's gone in!" she reflected, still quoting from her favorite hymn. "I think I'm next!" But she didn't utter this. Her eyes had said it for her. Anyone could see it: she would not last long, now. Old Henrietta Lange was due to embark on one last journey.

Once again, I had intended to bring up the key, to inquire whether Henrietta knew its whereabouts. Once again, it slipped my mind. Instead, I just squeezed Henrietta's hands, smiled, and said good-bye, persuaded it was for the last time.

Arriving again at the church, I retreated to my study, exhausted from the strain of sadness. Under the window where I'd made room was the library table, appearing more magnificent than ever. I had lobbied shamelessly to bring it there, to claim it for my own personal sanctum. Yet it was more than just a pretty piece now. It was a symbol of a loving journey, a link both to a dying past and a promised future. It could not stay there. It was meant to be given, to be shared, admired by all, like the very love it bespoke.

Back through the vestibule and down into Fellowship Hall I heaved it, grabbing it in the middle, endeavoring not to drag its legs over the tile floor. Frustrated, I turned the table on its side, thinking to hoist it up and bear it with the edge of the tabletop resting against my thighs. It was then, by chance, that I had brushed up against it: a faded envelope, wedged and taped into the table's underbracing. The paper tore in the act of freeing it, and onto the floor clanked a metal object with teeth and a loop at the top. It was the missing skeleton key.

I returned the table to its upright position and knelt before it. Reverently, like an act of worship, I inserted the key into the keyhole and gave it one full clockwise turn. The lock let out one crisp click, sweet music in my ears, and then the drawer pulled open. There to one side was a single book, its cover disfigured, its binding coming apart. I opened it to the title page. Say and Seal, it read, by Anna B. Warner. And on the facing page was a note:

And then, a date, too magnificent to fathom: It read, June 21, 1889.

"But that's impossible!" I cried. "That can't be!" And I peered out at the burr oak tree, standing proud on the south lawn, shedding its calico leaves again for the hundredth time. "Young!" I thought. "A mere child of a tree!" For I knew a mighty oak of a woman, a Lazarus of a soul. And now she was heading for a home beyond heaven's gate, which opens wide to children of all ages, there to live henceforth and evermore.