Another Goodbye

If you saw her you'd just see a little old lady, bent over with a hunched back, pushing a walker. Her skin was fair but very thin, bones visible under the frail wrapping. If you were the wondering kind, you'd wonder what stories she could tell, where she'd been, what her family was like, who loved her. 

If you got to know her, you'd find that fragile frame held a young person in an old body. Despite twitching limbs and eyes glazed by near-total blindness, her mind was sharp and her memory intact. Ask her about her life and she had a million stories to tell, funny ones, sad ones, gripping ones.  She'd lived long but had lived every minute to the hilt. She'd lived in far-off, exotic places, traveled widely and read even more widely than she'd traveled. She'd been a number of things: child, student, secretary, wife, mother, homemaker, florist, traveler, civic worker, avid gardener, tennis player, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend to people of all classes, from princes to domestic workers in many corners of the world.

There had been one man in her life, the man she'd married and with whom she'd shared 56 years of that marriage. They were partners in life and even after his death, his presence was with her. One of her sons told her of a visit to a place where she and her husband had lived not long after their marriage. "Wait until I tell Fred," she said. The son wondered how she was going to do that as his father had died some years before. I have no doubt Fred heard.

I met her because she wanted a job done that she couldn't do completely on her own and I'd had a bit of experience in that line. She had begun the project at least three or four years prior, dictating her stories onto tapes, lots of tapes.  Over the course of nearly two years, we talked at least once a week and as I would be reading back what I'd transcribed and stopped for breath, she'd take over and repeat the next part of the story, word for word as she'd dictated them years before. That used to make me laugh and mock-scold her, "Hey, I hadn't gotten to that yet!" and then she would laugh with me. The happiest day came when I could finally put the product of her years of work into her hands.  She laughed and waved her hands and feet in the air like an excited child. She'd completed her task and now others could read her stories, family stories, family traditions.  I was honored to have been a small part in making that possible.

I never underestimated her. She might have been frail and elderly but she had an almost indomitable will. Not many 89-year-old women with severe osteoporosis could survive a fall that broke bones in her neck and not only survive but within 3 months be as active and mobile as before the fall. She had finished one project but it was time to move on to the next -- planning her 90th birthday parties the next spring. And plan she did, down to the details.  She knew precisely what she wanted and that was how it was going to be.  Well, almost. I don't think she planned on one little detail.

Her friends had planned an 80th birthday party for her with exquisite decorations and fantastic food. Unfortunately she spent the day in the hospital and missed the party because of gall stones and  resulting pancreatitis. She will miss her 90th birthday party too, for a very different reason.  Still, I have a feeling that there will be a tiara and a martini laid out for her and that somewhere she will be laughing about it.

Well, Ginger, you've begun the sequel to your book and I'm sorry I can't help you write this one. I will miss you. You might not always have had an easy life but you lived it to the fullest. You never gave up and I don't think you ever really gave in. You're a perfect lesson in what it is to drink from the cup of life and drink deeply. The world's a little darker without you in it, but I have a feeling that somewhere in heaven there's a party going on with tiaras, martinis, a good band and Fred.

Somehow I think you've heard me say all this. Thanks for sharing your life and family with me. We will meet again, I'm counting on it.

May God bless you as God always has blessed and loved you. May you rest in peace and most assuredly rise in glory. I have a feeling God would hear about any deviation from that plan. And I say that with all affection -- and confidence. Goodnight, Ginger -- for a little while.