FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. – Lera Johnson was competent and strong, dark-eyed, slender and beautiful. She ran her own business, an Alabama beauty parlor, and reared two boys. She was devoted to her husband, Harold, and let actions instead of sanctimonious words illustrate her beliefs.

After six days at her shop doing hair, she’d spend Sunday afternoons giving free shampoos and sets to old women in the nursing home. Now, that was charity.

In the days when hairdressers were chosen for life, like telephones, and you didn’t flit from salon to salon, Lera’s clients were her friends. They gave her gifts for Christmas – chocolate layer cakes and afghans and butterfly trays.

Lera was my mother-in-law, and because of her I never understood mother-in-law jokes. Nobody ever was easier to get along with.

When I cook, I use a pressure cooker because that’s how Lera taught me, an efficient way to get a meal on the table after a work day. That’s how we caught on that Alzheimer’s was stalking Lera; she kept burning the butter peas in the pressure cooker. That definitely was un-Leralike.

On about the third trip to the hardware store for a replacement pressure cooker gasket, the truth dawned. There was nothing wrong with the gasket. Lera was forgetting to adjust the heat.

When I eat, I sit at a table she once owned. It is one of those red and white enamel models common in the 1940s, replete with chrome legs and a leaf that pulls out like a camper extension. I’ve always suspected a frustrated auto designer thought of them. You cannot wear them out.

The original chairs, however, designed in a vulnerable “S” shape, collapsed long ago. I bought a couple of period reproductions from a box store.

On a recent shopping excursion, I ran across four red chairs almost identical to the originals, in good shape and a bargain. I couldn’t resist.

I was sitting in one today, thinking about Lera and old times. Our relationship was like my college education. I was too young and dumb to fully appreciate it.

What I’d give now to ask her questions about her childhood. My former husband, Jimmy, Lera’s oldest son, wrote this: “She was five years old when she held the hand of her own dying mother. I can’t tell you why the woman died. My mother didn’t know. In that time and in that place, you didn’t need a good reason to die …”

Lera’s father remarried and things got better. But I’ll wager it was in that tough childhood she became the resourceful and uncomplaining sort she remained till she died. The British don’t have a monopoly on the stiff upper lip. We are who we are by about age 6.

I don’t know exactly why she’s on my mind today. Maybe it’s the new chairs, or because it’s time to plant tomatoes — nobody grew better, bigger tomatoes than Lera — or because the world today seems so full of bluster, braggadocio and self-serving types that character stands out like gold in gravel.

I no longer believe the meek will inherit the earth. I think greedy hucksters will do away with it long before that can happen, and there is no heavenly reward.

But if being remembered matters, Lera’s presence is as constant as the rattling steam valve of my old pressure cooker. I miss her.

Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s most recent book is “Hank Hung the Moon … And Warmed Our Cold, Cold Hearts.” Comments are welcomed at rhetagrimsley@aol.com.