Advertisement But less than a month ago, Dorothy was living at home, fixing supper, helping with the dishes. The doctors had said and in our minds, we all knew that with the cancer and with her age, the time was short, but mind and heart have different understandings.
She was my great aunt, wife of my grandfather’s youngest brother, one of the last of that generation of the family. Living in a time punctuated by war and the Depression, she married late, their sons are my age, leapfrogging a generation in a manner more common when families were larger.
So we gathered with our memories, lifetimes long. Saddened by an empty place in our lives but comforted remembering a long, full life, lived well, that had, in its time, run its course.
There is a sad, reluctant acceptance when death comes at what
we can recognize as the end of a life, but death can be an impatient thing.
Trish was just 56 the treacly greeting-card verse writers would call her 56 years young but this one time that saccharin clichι almost fits. To be blessed for a lifetime with the wide-eyed sparkle of a toddler meeting the world afresh is a rare gift. It’s been more than two decades since Gayle first taught at St. Mary’s preschool and, in the course of doing teacher’s-husband things, I encountered her chipmunk-energy arranging and rearranging the classroom down the hall. Chalk it up to life’s pleasant improbabilities that, for one reason or another, our paths kept crisscrossing and her husband, Patrick, periodically kept Gayle company while they waited with the other grown-ups for the latest playdate to end. But then, Trish seemed to tackle almost all of life like a playdate with exuberance and a no-holds-barred enthusiasm. She lived life like a puppy, without reservation, more alive than most of us ever dare to be.
But death is an impatient thing, rude in its interrupting. It comes without our bidding and leaves us to seek comfort as we may, remembering a full life, lived well, cut short in full course. Far too soon for our liking.
Which is to say life is its own cause for celebrating. Each day. Every day. Though some days have a special sweetness like the day Arlene turned 80.
It’s a shame, I think, that we spend so much time and energy on birthdays for people too young to appreciate them. One, two, three milestone years, I suppose after all, it is hard to deny standing upright and mastering bowel control as significant lifetime accomplishments. At 16, you can drive, at 18 be drafted and 21 lets you drink yourself silly in peace. Every one is a good excuse for a party, but last Sunday
Arlene’s my aunt Dad’s oldest younger sister and I don’t think it spills any family secrets to say she’s faced about every bad pitch life can throw, never took the walk and hasn’t struck out yet. If Arlene can turn 80 amid kids, grandkids, brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, friends and probably one or two strangers who wandered in to mooch a free plate of food we all have life to look forward to. After all, in the pictures displayed on every table, we could see how it is done.
Pictures going back 80 years and more. There we all were. Hair darker and more plentiful, perhaps a bit less rounded, but fashion in the 70s did no one a favor. We’re all there except the ones not born yet, but their places are taken by others long since gone. Every snapshot, every photo recalls a party, a time someone felt was good enough to preserve for as much of forever as they could grab onto.
And there, on those tables, there were hundreds of them and hundreds, thousands more, tucked away in albums and shoeboxes. Evidence, if we ever want to look at it, of the times and people who make life worth living for 80 years, 92 years and more. The times and people who make the memories we call on for comfort when life, full and lived well, comes to an end.
Always, we hope, far too soon for our liking.
Jerome Christenson is columnist and online editor for the Winona Daily News.
