The phone numbers on June’s list were mostly disconnected. I tried Robin, the lone niece first. All I knew about Robin was she had four daughters and had been widowed at a fairly young age. I think she was about 5 years younger than me. When I couldn’t get through to her on the phone number I had, I resorted to informing her of June’s death via email. My hand trembled as I pressed the send button. Living in a digital age doesn’t mean I should deliver this kind of news over the Internet, but I had no other option. I included my cell phone number if she wanted to talk to me.
In fifty years, I’d never met this woman or any of her brothers. June spoke of them periodically, and shared pictures and cards they sent her at Christmastime but that was all I knew of them. I still often wonder why she kept her blood family separate from Dad’s. My sisters and brother knew nothing of this portion of June’s life. I knew her best and I feel I knew their names and nothing else about them.
Within a few minutes, my cell phone rang showing a number I didn’t recognize.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Linda, it’s Robin.” Her voice, high pitched, quivering. “I’m in shock.”
Shock? Her shallow words shook me to the very bottom of my soul.
“When I spoke to her at Christmas I had the feeling she was failing,” Robin said.
Christmas? By last Christmas, June, under hospice care, lived in the nursing home. Robin had all my contact information and never asked me how to reach her aunt. The phone at Hawthorne had been disconnected in October. It’s not possible she spoke to June at Christmas. She never even bothered to lend a helping hand or a kind word to her elderly relative.
I don’t want a medal. Honestly, I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with a committee when it came to making decisions. Each day revealed a new wrinkle to iron out. I often asked Richard and Susan for assistance but they both knew the decision was solely mine. I knew her best.
Robin rattled on how her grown daughters cried when they heard the news, and asked when and where would the funeral be.
“June asked that there be no obituary and no funeral,” I said.
“Really? I’m surprised.”
I can give you the name of the funeral director. He won’t require an affidavit from you, the blood relative intent on carrying out your own wishes instead of the person who’s died. I bit my tongue in order not to say what I thought. June would not be lying in a cooler if you or your brothers had stepped in and taken care of her. I had to find a way to end this call before I lost my cool completely.
“She’ll be buried at sea with my father. That’s what she wanted,” I said.
“Where?” Robin asked.
“At sea,” I repeated.
“Oh.”
“Robin, would you be able to call your brothers and tell them the news?” I asked. “I haven’t been able to contact them.” I knew what the answer to this question would be but I asked anyway on the chance these relatives would step in and ease my burden one last time.
“I don’t speak to my brothers. I don’t know how to get in touch with them,” she answered.
Terrific. June knew they wouldn’t be of any help. That’s why she never introduced us. I was on my own and still wishing I didn’t have to bear this burden alone. On the other hand I feel blessed I didn’t have to share it with someone as clueless as this one.
I let a day pass before trying to call the nephews. I had very pleasant conversations with two of them. Peter thanked me for caring for her and told me stories of a time she visited him in Pennsylvania. How she was so funny and loose compared to his mother who he described as conservative and tight lipped. Larry told me similar tales of funny Aunt June and nice Uncle Paul. He gave his thanks to me too for all I did for her.
The third nephew, Jim, lived in Nebraska somewhere. June constantly worried about him. I never knew why but suspected some kind of bipolar disorder or mental illness. She left no phone number for him, so I only communicated with him through email. He called the lawyer and asked for his money before June had even made it to the after life.
“Problems are like washing machines. They twist, they spin and knock us around; but in the end we come out cleaner and brighter than before.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
A year or so after June died; Richard and I visited Asheville, North Carolina. I’d never been there but our mission was to see the Biltmore Estate. Being in the furniture business for so many years, Richard had been to the area many times and was absolutely mesmerized by the Vanderbilts and their sprawling and extravagant estate. The real perk of this trip was that we stayed in a hotel in downtown Asheville across the street from Thomas Wolfe’s childhood home.
June had always told me she was Thomas Wolfe’s cousin. By the time I found the copies of the family books, and I began researching the writings of Thomas Wolfe, June was unable to remember anything more about the family connection. I was left on my own to try and figure it out. The dates of their births didn’t match up as cousins, he was born in 1900, she in 1921. Armed with the names of the Wolfe’s I found in the books, I went to tour his Old Kentucky Home. I was the only tourist that day so I received a private guided look through the museum for the price of a group tour.
For me, the house told a fascinating story very similar to what I had read in Look Homeward Angel, which is largely thought to be autobiographical. The house had been restored after a fire set by an arsonist in 1998, but it still retained its early twentieth century look and feel.
The guide walked slowly through the many rooms, explaining which the family used and those rented out to the boarders. The tiny kitchen, with barely enough room for one, turned out meals for all the occupants of the home. Handmade patchwork quilts covered the beds, similar to the ones June’s mother handmade, lace doilies graced the dressers and night stands. A strange sense of belonging and familiarity washed over me, in a comforting and calming way.
Afterwards I talked with the museum director and asked her to help me fill in June’s family tree. I left my information with her to see if she could connect the dots. It took several weeks but June’s mother, Esther, was Thomas’ cousin, June’s grandfather and W. O. were brothers. She belonged to the Wolfe side of the family that stayed in Pennsylvania. The pieces of the family puzzle began to fall into place.
Outside of the house is a cement pair of Thomas’ shoes. He was a big man, 6 foot 6 inches tall. Down the street, I slipped my feet into a cement impression of his size eleven shoes and put my arm around the waist of a life size metal sculpture of the author. Richard snapped our picture.
All the while I felt like June and her famous relative could see me, relishing in watching me traipse around the family home. I made it clear when inside the home it was my stepmother who was related, not me, and that fact made not one bit of difference to any of the people I spoke to. For once the step part of our kindred spirits was not important to anyone. Not even to a brilliant author, Thomas Wolfe, or to those who worked to keep his legacy alive at his museum.
***
The second time I was certain I didn’t love and respect her any less or her of me was a much different experience. Hurricane Irma had just pounded the state of Florida. Everyone I knew was on edge even days after the storm had passed. That’s typical when these kinds of weather events occur and I’d been through many of them in the past. June despised hurricanes, raising her level of panic to a fevered pitch for several days prior and after the landfall. I tried not to let the negative energy seep into my well-being.
A friend needed to vent her lingering frustrations and at the time felt the need to criticize another woman she knew for never visiting her mother in a nursing home. The daughter lived only a few miles away from her aging parent.
“She just can’t find the time to see her mother and I think that’s disgusting,” the friend said.
“It can be a hard thing to do. It forces
people to face their own mortality and not everyone wants to look into the future,” I replied in the woman’s defense.
“But they live in the same town. There’s no excuse,” she said.
“I can understand how she feels. I couldn’t bring myself to visit June,” I admitted.
“You lived a hundred miles away and she wasn’t really your mother,” she replied.
I felt the bile rise into my throat and turned my back on the conversation, all words escaped me. No, June wasn’t my mother, but yes, she played an integral part in shaping me from a young age. I had a very different relationship with my own mother who also played a large part in turning me into who I am. Both taught me things about life I loved and embraced. Both exposed me to a dark side of themselves I wanted to turn my back on. I came out the other end a better person for all they gave me.
At that moment, the torn and tattered pieces of my heart mended themselves back together. I did all I could to make sure June lived out the last of her time on earth as comfortably and well as possible. Whether I physically went to see her or not, it made no difference to June. She lived in my heart and I lived in hers.
“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end.” - Gilda Radner
Epilogue
Whenever I was working on writing this memoir, I carried around a large canvass bag stuffed with all the notes and notebooks I used while navigating the path to the end of June’s life. The checklist book I gave her years ago when I had a thought somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I needed to know what she wanted in the event of her death weighed down the bag.
Out of curiosity, I opened it again looking for something to complete this story. The book has pages to write in where the will is kept, bank accounts, doctors, lawyers, and insurance policies. June wrote in what she could. Over the years, I’m amazed to say, she updated the book evidenced on the page of important people. All but one had been crossed off with a blue pen when they had died. A snapshot of life and death in our later years was pictured on that page.
I ran my finger down the list of special people who had been a part of my life too. The conduit of memories was because of June. Paper clipped to the inside front cover was a small piece of paper. I did not recognize the handwriting. It wasn’t June’s. Someone she knew must have thought she would find comfort in it. Did it soothe her to know Dad was waiting for her? Did she know I would find solace in it too? Her way of saying thank you when she was no longer able.
I read the saying aloud.
I give you this one thought to keep,
I am with you still,
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand
Winds that blow,
I am the diamond
Glints on snow,
I am the sunlight
On ripened grain,
I am the gentle Autumn rain.
When you awaken in the
Morning hush, I am the swift,
Uplifiting rush of quiet birds in
Circled flight.
I am the soft stars
That shine at night.
Do not think of me as gone.
I am with you still in
Each new dawn.
All is well.
A Bittersweet Goodnight Page 24
