Part Two of A Little Valentine's Day Miracle: Letters from a Recluse in the Desert, Part One got delayed because one week after that miracle, my sister had a heart attack at age 59, and she came closer to death's door than I care to imagine.
February 14 brought a"Lazarus, come forth" letter from my penpal.
February 23 brought my sister to the Emergency Room
with pulmonary edema. Lungs full. Not breathing. It is a miracle, perhaps, that she survived that episode, or it is a stunning tribute to her sheer willpower to draw another breath. We don't know she will make it to her 60th birthday, but none of us knows, from one day to the next, who will live to see the next birthday.
NEWS update today, Saturday, after I'd already posted this post:
Today, I got a phone call: our sister in E.R. again. She'd driven herself the two hours home for Easter. Couldn't breathe. The nearest E.R. couldn't diagnose her, and she was transferred to a bigger hospital.
Death will not get her. Not this weekend. Not before her 60th birthday, not before the next baptism, not before she meets her new grand-nieces (two of 'em!).
I won't let you die, Lori
Update #2: Today, on Easter, she met her grand-niece for the first time. Last night, her only child made it in from Minneapolis. Nothing cheers her more than seeing her daughter more than a few times a year--unless it's interacting with babies. Lori's always remained a child herself, which is my explanation for her peerless gift of winning over babies and toddlers.
And now, back to the post I'd originally posted.
Sudden death
was a dreaded call in my short-lived Tae Kwon Do days. Now it's just one more thing out there, not to fear or dread, but to keep us grounded and grateful for every moment we have.
Our son, last month, lost a high school classmate to a car wreck (her fiance was his best friend in high school).
A few years before that, our son's college buddy lost his fiance quite suddenly, and for a year the guy seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth:
I meant to write more about my mom's cousin, the penpal who came forth from her tomb and managed one more letter. I phoned her again, and she sounds ebullient and high-spirited once more at age 81.
Two recent posts about women in our ancestry are so inspiring, I thought I'd take a stab at some sort of Part Two of the Valentine's Day Miracle. The two posts:
@mountainjewel
Ancestral Inspiration | Her Art & Business: Lessons in Empowerment from my Grandma
This post is inspired by @osm0sis's posts sharing her great grandfather's works of art.
She encouraged me to share some art of my (Wren's) grandmother and talk a bit about her life and empowering journey!
and
@tygertyger
Zoe’s Daughters or a set of Russian nesting dolls
The woman on my Mothers side of the family have always been exceptionally strong and many led exceptional lives which were often paired with deep tragedy. We boast such women as Zoe Obolensky , Lover, mistress and Patron of Russian revolutionary and anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. My great great grandmother, sister to Leo Tolstoy’s wife was in part inspiration for the book Anna Karenina.
Before that, of course, there was
@authorofthings
My grandmother died of a broken arm. Not technically, but that’s how I remember it.... when my grandmother’s arm somehow got broken, she had decided that she was done. She wouldn’t get it treated for the longest time... It took her a few decades to fully and completely die, but I remember thinking then, even as a kid, that she’d let that damn broken arm kill her.
I had been gathering old letters from my penpal and thinking about how she didn't rely on her husband. How she signed up all five of their children for gun safety and training classes, then took them out camping and hunting, without him. She was tough, and still is, and so are descendants.
I'd given up the search for any letters or journals written by my spinster aunt, because Dad, in a fit of housecleaning, burned most of her "chicken scratching" on scraps of paper. (Heartbroken: yes, I was. I'd have treasured those scraps.)
Today, on a bookshelf, the last journal my Aunt Malita ever wrote surfaced. I have no recollection of putting it there but what a blast from the past it would have been to read, except that it covers, very briefly, her final months. She had mysteriously lost weight. Down to 80 pounds for no reason. Then, X-rays, then, the diagnosis of lung cancer.
But one thing stood out. She'd always been one to write down memorable quotes (heartbreaking, I say, that my dad burned all those), but only this one showed up without attribution, and she wrote it twice, a sign that her memory was going, or that this quote really made an impact on her:
Translation (her handwriting, like my penpal's, is hard to decipher):
If someone doesn't like the way you look or the way you are,
that's their problem. Maybe they're not the right person to be around.
This one is haunting (especially because of the phone call that came after I'd posted this):
"The grave is your home forever" (Psalm 49)
What a year 2018 has been:
Ash Wednesday landed on Valentine's Day.
Easter lands on April Fool's Day.
Our sister Julie was found dead on March 18, 1976, in the middle of Lent. Four weeks later, April 18, 1976, was Easter.
I'm not a fan of Lent. But I still look for signs and wonders, good omens, and miracles, small or great, wherever they can be found.
While resurrection of the body and life everlasting sound like a pipe dream, I entertain vague images of heaven, time travel, a place where Julie and Malita are together--with a horse, of course; Julie always wanted one; so I cobbled together a sad little original oil painting someone donated to Goodwill, copied photos of my dad, his sister, his first child Julie, all together in one place in time, all children together.
Happy Easter!
Monday Update
My sister's daughter just posted this:
Do I need to spell it out too?
My big sister was always the tallest, strongest, and bravest of us five sisters. Funny, fun-loving, boisterous, adventurous Lori was a class clown, a troublemaker, not a straight-A student, not a conventional role model, but to me she has always been someone to look up to. She's taken so many hard knocks, the first being the loss of her best friend and closest sister (not just in age). Lori's senior year of high school was often interrupted by visits with BCI agents (Bureau of Criminal Investigation). Her choice of community college was dictated by the BCI office being in that town.
Leukemia in 1994 took a lot of wind out of her sails, but she sails on.
I was her bone marrow donor, a nearly identical 99% match. Later, when a nurse gave her a transfusion of O-positive blood, Lori stopped her: "That's not my blood type!" The nurse laughed. "It is now." In later years, someone read her the riot act for not thanking me every day for her life. As if! As if I'd tolerate that nonsense! Lori accuses me of "poisoning" her with my marrow, every time she gets a headache or some other malady I'm notorious for and she never suffered until the transplant. I wouldn't have it any other way. We do not say it, but we know, more than anything else in this life can be knowable, that the love of a sister is a force of nature, like gravity.
It goes without saying: I love her and never want to lose her. Just the thought of it has this Stoic in tears, and we come from a long line of people who do not weep. (Not in front of anyone else, anyway.)
Thursday update:
She is now back in her own house, fending for herself rather than letting our parents dote on her. We want to spoil her and tend to her like a rare rose in the garden. (Water and Weed & Feed you, Lori!)
Spring will come again, soon
Never mind that the calendar says it's already here - Spring always comes!
Lori in 2016
art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics
