Growing up, I had a great aunt by the name
of Florence Ida Cheney. I loved her. She was kind and wonderful, and baked
angel cakes and fudge and mailed you treats when you needed them most. While
most of the adults were really not well, she was fine. Like a fairy tale, she
lived in a tall house up on a cliff overlooking Melrose, Ma., never drove a
car, worked her whole life teaching elementary school, and worked on the
weekends and afternoons in the church office. She had gardens and gardens all
about, a glass bookcase on the wall with a collection of dog figures she would
let you take out and put back in and arrange any which way. Her sheets were
fragrant, her African Violets and Geraniums magnificent, and she cared about
everything.
She walked everywhere. Down the steep
hill, winter and summer, to the school she taught at, to the church she
worshipped in and worked at. She washed people's laundry in her bathtub the
same way she washed her own, then hung and dried it, ironed it, and made extra
money for buying birthday presents and Xmas presents for her nieces and
nephews.
I visited her often, looked out for her as
she grew old, and tried but simply couldn't stretch enough to see past her age.
I remember trying. To really SEE her, and get a sense of her life and who she
was.
When she grew older, she would whisper to
me about how she, a Baptist, was best friends with a family down the street,
who were....Catholics! They were so friendly, and she had pizza with them every
Friday night, because they were Italians. Oh my. But they were good friends,
and good to her.
So she stretched, herself, to see them and
know them and delight in who they were.
Once she brought me with my first born to
visit a dear friend of hers, who gave my three year old a hard candy. I was still
young, and not confident enough to say the thanks but no thanks thing. So I
fretted a bit, sitting there polite, til he choked and I Heimliched him and it
popped out across the sitting room, while the two of them, never had children,
looked shocked. I smiled. My kid asked if he could go get the candy and eat it.
I said nope.
When she lay dying, I went every other day
to the hospital. I sat and talked with her and held her hand, though she was not conscious. When I came back from
getting lunch, she was gone.
I was the one who went back to her home a
few days later to clean everything out and pack up her things. Her life. I'm
not sure why no one else helped me. It was a huge job, I realize now. The town
was dry, and I remember driving around looking for a place to buy a beer, at
least. I slept in her bed and had nightmares. I really had no idea how to
manage the reality. Of her gone. Of her life. Of packing up a life.
Houseplants and all her beloved small
things she loved. Her piano and all the music. Her poetry. The food in her
frig. It was all so overwhelming, the 'never ever again' aspect of it all. I
simply was not prepared, nor mature enough, to be there and digest it at all.
For her memorial service, I baked all her
favorite cookies she had always made. Twin Nut Wonders, made with ground
almonds, shaped into crescents, dusted with powdered sugar. All of her kind
friends came to grieve her passing. So different than the very waspy other
funerals I'd been to, which demanded that you celebrate! And not think about
the death or the life gone or anything else. Her friends cried and smiled and
embraced each other and talked about her life. Her ways. Her smile. Her gifts.
I drank it all in, until I was full and comforted and better from it all.
I had a VW Rabbit, and stuffed it with her
beloved things. Garden rakes poking out open windows. Her bird bath. Oh, I
didn't want to leave one thing behind.
Years later, after too many of my own
moves, I unearthed her saved poetry, all in rhyme. I found photos of the Sunday
School Summer Program she was the director of, the photo of hundreds of kids,
and her, there, smiling! I began to think about what it would take to pull that
off. All the different skills you would need to have.
I began to remember her remarkable piano
playing. Her singing. Her gardening and cooking and dirty jokes, told to all of
us at family gatherings, fast, so that the little kids would have a hard time
getting them.
I remembered her kind loving ways, when I
slept over, devoid of my five brothers for once. I remember her fluffy
butterscotch cat she was crazy about , and her husband, a tiny bit, when he was
alive. And after he died, she lamented making him have franks and beans friday
nights so that they could save up for things.
She once told me that she saw her sister
with a new diamond ring on her hand, larger! So she made her sweet husband go
out with her and get her one that big. The next time they visited , her sister
exclaimed at her ring. When she asked why, she was told that her sister's ring was
actually fake! And there she was, with the real one. Pfft. Did she laugh at
herself!
She gave me that big fancy ring, which I
wore day and night, and I think chipped a bit , while gardening. Then one day,
in Northampton, years after her death, it kind of popped off my hand, and fell
into a drain on the street. Truly. I stood there for a long long time. And
then, walked away, let it go, feeling the love of her and the life I had with
her and her laughter and consoling and clutched that to me again.
Now that I am in my sixties, I can see her
face. In so many settings. I have begun to catch a glimmer of all the things
she did not say. All the things she felt for, worried about, concerning my
upbringing. Things she fretted over and felt powerless against.
Now that I am in my sixties I am struck by
the way she must have walked down icy slippery sidewalks all those years, after
her husband was gone, to get her groceries that she carried to her home, while
she was on foot, until she became ill before she died. I think about what it
must have been like for her, to have her life. Her music. Her old age.
Everything resting upon her somehow working enough to pull it off. To have food
and clothing and a home, being paid a pittance because she was a woman. So that
her managing was intentionally so much harder and more desperate....than it
would have been for any man.
I think about going to see her while in my
20's, and her making me chicken. Because I was a vegetarian. Yes! And loving
her and sitting there eating it while she happily watched.
I remember it was nightfall, and I was
visiting her. I was a small child, away from home, but her home was so much
better and nicer and comforting and relaxing I could have stayed forever. I
remember we are outside on a summer's night, twilight, and she is holding my
hand while we walk just a tiny bit close to the edge of the cliff, and we just
a little bit peer over the edge, down to the lights of the small city far
below, an awesome thing, to me, filling me with delight. The safety of her
presence. The excitement of the view.
I remember us walking all around her
house as the night grew dark, as she showed me her rose bushes and perennials
and annuals, and feeling just as good and safe and wondrous as any child ever felt.
