 |
| Christmas morning, 1980-something |
Joanna passed away the day after Christmas, and was one of the kindest people I've ever known. She and her late-husband Bob (my dad's brother) were always entertaining at parties, cracking jokes, ready with big smiles and hugs. One of my favorite photos is from when I was about five years old- I'm sitting on Granny's lap, wearing a giant furry bear head hat, and there's Aunt Joanna, with her arm around Bob, beaming.
Joanna had been a model in her younger years, a striking All-American blond beauty with straight blond hair and bright eyes. She worked for jewelry shops as she got older- she used to gift my sister and me chunky wonderful pieces of costume jewelry (we were very into dress up as kids- between the costume jewelry and orange ballgowns, polka dotted cocktail dresses and various fur stoles that were in a trunk in the attic, we were ready for whatever our imaginations could come up with). She never had children of her own, but was a decade younger than Bob, and a few years younger than my parents, and loved to play with us when we were little. She even gave us her Barbie dolls, which would have been worth a fortune if we hadn't taken to dying their hair with watercolor paints before we knew their value (to us, though, they were priceless in terms of the fun we had).
She and Bob lived in a stone house in the town I now reside in. It was across from a YMCA, and I drive by it occasionally. Remarkably, I can still remember bits of the inside, the stone fireplace, the carpet, and their dogs wrestling, even though I was in early elementary school when they packed up and moved to San Antonio, Texas. They didn't come back as frequently as I would have liked, though they did manage to make it north for the occasional Christmas celebration. Jeff and I visited them once too, on a cross country drive in the early 2000's. I remember when we arrived at the house, Joanna's hands were shaking, but after a bit of orange juice, she was ready to go, and we went exploring, taking in the River Walk, a not-suitable-for-children restaurant called Dick's, and The Alamo. It was the most time I'd spent with her since I was a child, and I absolutely loved it. Her laugh was still lyrical, if a little stymied by years of cigarettes and alcohol.
The last time I saw her, it was for my sister's wedding. We first caught up with her on our way to the venue for the "welcome" dinner, where she sweet talked a worker in a passing golf cart into giving her and E. a ride up the hill from our parked cars to the restaurant. E.was thrilled, and I have a picture of them relaxing as they cruised.
It was a weekend to remember, and we took a big family photo on the dock of my sister's island. The picture is a little grainy (it was night, and camera phones weren't perfect). But she's beaming, and wrapped in a shawl next to one of my cousins. It's the last photo I have of her, and it's perfect. We were making plans to try to visit her next time we drove south for a school break, and she was excited to head to my sister's farm this summer for the 50th anniversary of it being in our family. I'm happy she finally got on Facebook after the wedding- even though we didn't see her in person, we exchanged messages a lot, and talked on the phone several times. It made me feel more connected to her, and I'm happy it meant she was able to be in touch with us, and many old friends.
We called her this Christmas, as is our annual tradition. My dad's whole family (all his cousins and us) get together for Bloody Marys, brunch, and merriment (I even had t-shirts made this year with that message). It's something that has gotten fancier in the last few years- as a kid, it was more about the bacon and scrambled eggs, with bagels of course. Now, there are still bagels, but the egg dishes are more gourmet, and there are fancy items like steamed mussels, and lox for the bagels.
But the constant is the phone call to Joanna. We pass the phone around the table, each taking a turn to catch her up on our lives, see how she's doing, and laugh about whatever random topics of conversation come up. I wrote about the family traditions we have, specifically that one, several years ago, and it makes me happy to think about the joy we all shared.
Even with Joanna in the hospital, we turned on the speaker phone and called South Carolina, only to find that the phone in her room wasn't hooked up, and according to the nurse "she was sleeping". We called her sister Janet to make sure that when Janet saw her, she'd tell her we tried. I don't know if Joanne ever got the message- when my mom spoke to Janet that night, she said that Joanna was on heavy doses of morphine to deal with the pain from the sepsis that had set in, and it was looking like she may not last the night.
Less than 24 hours, I was sitting in a parking lot when my mom called, and I knew without answering that Joanna was gone. I held it together until we hung up, and then let myself cry. My dad, all his siblings, and my granny had predeceased her, and now my mom is the only one left from that immediate crew. I'm grateful my dad's first cousins are all still with us, still regaling us with stories of their crazy younger years, when they helped build the farm, drove cross country, and took vacations as a group to places like Martha's Vineyard and the Jersey Shore.
Looking through the boxes Janet sent, the thing that made me smile the most were Christmas cards from the last several years, as well as post cards and even some newspaper clippings, tucked inside the books my sister and I had written. I'm going to mail my sister's up to her, and I think she'll get a kick out of reading the postcards especially. I turned to a random page in mine, and it was a story I'd written about my dad and Uncle Bill, and cliff jumping near my uncle's farm upstate. The passage was:
In the ensuing years, I would see a variety of people bound off this bluff. Sometimes they were naked, appendages flailing in the summer sun. Sometimes they brought booze, or rowdy girls, or both. Once, when the plumbing was out, we came by kayak with soap and shampoo, and bubbles danced around us after our leaps. But nothing felt quite so magical as watching my balding uncle and graying father relive their youths by bolting off that cliff.
It seemed a little like a message- to enjoy the moments we have, to embrace the silly and the joy. I took that to heart this evening, when I took photos of my kids jumping off the swingset again, and played a family game of soccer in the yard.Aunt Joanna always lit up the room of people around her, and while she had her hard days (don't we all), she made a point to do the thoughtful things that made the world a kinder place, like giving me an etching that she had from when she was a little girl for my daughter, and commandeering the backseat of a friend's car that was headed to New Jersey, so that she could send up a family rocking chair for R. when she was learning to read. Now, she's passed along these beautiful mementos- photos of our family that I can show my kids, and use to teach them about their relatives, especially my bright eyed aunt, who is dancing with her husband in one of the pictures, happily together for all time.
No comments:
Post a Comment