Memories

It was only a casual phone conversation. My sister and were just visiting about the usual stuff when suddenly she dropped a bomb on me. “By the way, you knew that E died?”

The world stopped for a couple of beats, but finally I managed to say, “No, I didn’t.”

“It was last Monday. The funeral was Friday. I’m sorry, I thought of calling you but I thought you would have heard.”

Somehow I got through the conversation without losing my manners, but the news plunged me into a “downer” that went on for a full 24 hours. E and I went a long way back. When my family first moved into the town (from the farmhouse we had been renting) E and her family lived across the alley from us. There were two kids, C and her brother T. My sister “sat” for them in the summers while the kids were out of school and the parents were at work. C became one of my closest friends in high school. She and her brother and I, with a couple of other kids, formed an instrumental combo that played together a lot, mostly big band tunes. We weren’t wonderful, but we had a grand time. When C had health problems and had to miss school, I was the one who went around to the teachers and got assignments for her so she could keep up. We were together when I had my first (and last!) taste of beer.

Through all of that, there were her parents. E was the dominant family member. She was wonderful. She was short, dark-haired. Snapping black eyes. Sort of a pugnacious chin. She didn’t take any guff from anyone. Spoke her mind. Very much grounded in that rare quality that we call common sense. Used plain language.

E was the oldest child in her family, and when their mother died E took on the responsibility of caring for the family and raising her siblings. The natural result was that she grew up accustomed to taking care of others and she spent her whole life doing that. She was a pretty strict parent, but it was clearly done in love for her children. She was a caring person, warmhearted, ready to help. I think she considered me her half-daughter. I know I considered her my half-mother.

We all kept in touch over the years. When C and I were home, we visited. Otherwise, we exchanged letters. Eventually life went downhill for her, and she moved back to our home town with physical and mental health issues. She died while I was living in Texas, and I wasn’t able to get home for the funeral.

Some of the clearest memories I have of E that come from my adult life:

I was sitting on the front porch of my parents’ house just after my dad had died, watching as E pulled up to the curb and got out of the car with a large baking dish full of food.

There was the time she and her husband were in the Dallas area, and she called me up to say Hello.

The first time E saw me after C died, she asked me: “What did I do wrong, honey?” More than once she asked me that question. The main problem the two had was that they were both strong personalities and too much alike. They always chafed each other, even at the best of times. But nothing a parent does can affect degenerative physical conditions or the development of mental illness. Not as far as I know anyway. I could tell her honestly that I didn’t think she had done anything wrong.

There was the time my sister and I sat at E’s kitchen table, visiting. My sister had a few questions about how some people were connected, and was asking E about them. I think E knew just about everyone, who was whose child, who had married whom, how all the connections went. And she knew about every road and place as well.

When I moved back to my home town a few years ago, E and I talked on the phone and I took her for rides or on errands a few times.

And then I wound up living in the same apartment house as she was, for a while, before her health deteriorated and she had to move to the local nursing home.

The news that E had died and been buried before I even found out about it was hard to take. I had counted on being there for her funeral. I had missed her husband’s funeral. I had missed C’s funeral. I needed to make some kind of formal good-bye to this family that was such a part of me. How much of my reaction was grief? How much was simple disappointment and frustration that I hadn’t had the opportunity to go to the funeral? I can’t say. Like E herself, I rarely cry very much, but that evening I cried fairly copiously and was depressed the next day. It wasn’t until I tracked E’s son down over the internet and talked to him that it started to ease.

I no longer believe in “heaven” as I was taught about it. I no longer believe that when we die, we go to “heaven.” I do believe we enter some other level of existence, a plane, a dimension, whatever we might call it, which is a vast improvement over this existence, and in my view it is a state in which we can be as close to the Source of Life as we desire to be. I have had two experiences that allowed a tiny bit of communication to me from that existence. (I suppose they both can be interpreted in other ways, but their timing and nature made it impossible for me to make any other conclusions about them, and the more experienced [and unbiased] people I asked confirmed that.) And I am not shy about asking the Source of Life to pass on a greeting once in a while, when I feel a need to touch base with someone who is no longer here. I trust that somehow I can get word through to E, to tell her I love her and miss her and am sorry I missed the good-bye. I think she will understand.