Goosebumps

So I was at the car dealership this Monday past. It necessitated a long wait of 6 hours. In walking days I'd go off for a walk or run, there are some interesting shops around and a giant mall across the street and a beautiful lake with boardwalk nearby. Or if I had anywhere to go without spending 6 hours in the one spot, I would have taken one of their numerous shuttles all over the city.

So there I was, ensconced one might say. Or incarcerated as another might. I never mind as I come equipped with both book and device but the knitting was too enormous to drag, I'm in the final stages of a vast shawl.

So I read and try and tune out the endless large screen TV which broadcasts non-stop sports to the slack-jawed men in the front row. I wouldn't dare touch that channel and click it to Discovery (would you?). The coffee is good, there is fresh popcorn and a few boxes of Timbits.

A woman a few rows up gets up to look at a notice board on the wall. My heart stops. She looks just like my Helen who died in December 2014. I feel tears bounce into my eyes and a golfball hit my throat, the loss can be so keen at times. She was closer than a sister, there was nothing we wouldn't tell each other. I so miss that and Stranger Woman brings the loss into such sharp focus.

I pretend to read as she sits down again, now in the row in front of me but to the side. Her hair, her profile, her slender attractive body, even her eyes with that half-moon shape, so unusual (I'm so glad one of Helen's granddaughters inherited those extraordinary eyes).

As if she senses I'm looking at her, she turns and I smile at her, urging myself not to go weird, not to say anything about Helen.

We chat, we're the same age, we uncover life stories, children. Daisy lost her husband 22 years before but as he was an only child, she stepped up to the plate and took care of his mother who died at 94 this past December. She admitted the sacrifice, but had created a separate apartment for her mother-in-law (referred to as Missus) and had a helper come in once a day to do what was necessary in personal care. But Missus insisted that it was only Daisy who could cook for her. It tied her down terribly. I mentioned my favourite Aunt Daisy to her, who was the only other Daisy I'd known personally. We talked of our daughters and their opportunities and moved on to our singular granddaughters. Daisy'd been an entrepreneur up north but moved to the Avalon when her children needed more educational opportunities. She was as fascinated with my journey as I was with hers. We were together about 90 minutes.

Now here's the zinger.

She got up with many goodbyes and desires to see me again some time just as they were paging her one more time.

Her last name was Cassidy*.

As was Helen's.

*changed at last minute for protection of her privacy as a quick FB search found her so very easily.

The Last of the O'Sullivan Sisters. Part 2 of 2.

See Part 1 here.

Strange that. How lives that can be so remarkable in hindsight are so very unremarkable when they are actually happening. My Auntie Kit's life was such. She had six children. She took care of her rather nasty mother-in-law (one of those who would drag you by the ear while screeching in weird laughter). When visiting my aunt I remember hiding in a wardrobe to escape the fun and games of Granny M. as they always involved pain of some kind or "teasing" now reclassified under 'abuse'. How her own grandchildren survived her is beyond me.

Auntie Kit joined her husband in his garage business, school bus runs and taxi service. She was one of the first female commercial drivers (I would say) in County Cork. On her Cork City runs she would always drop in for a cuppa and update my mother on life in their village of birth. Driving taxis and buses she would pick up all the news. Her husband, in the meantime, continued at night with his musical life as a band pianist, accordionist and banjo player. There were always sessions taking place in their parlour and as the children grew, they joined him in public appearances.

Her husband died young, reasonably young. Like his mother before him, he didn't believe in doctors so had undiagnosed diabetes. When he died, she reinvented herself as a golfer, bridge player and held Scrabble matches every Sunday night in her house. My father, himself a widower, would never miss a Sunday night at Kit's and when I was home on holidays, myself and my now older children would join the crowd of Scrabblers and munch on her wonderful baking and endless cups of tea. It was always a teetotal house.

She was featured in the paper quite a few years before her death (see above), having turned 90, still playing golf and bridge and driving herself around.

I will remember her as her own remarkable woman - an inspiration and a driving force. As were all the O'Sullivan sisters.

Precious Aunt

Beloved Kit.

Oh sweet darling woman.

And I at your wedding so very long ago

Where the granddad sang

And my brother was stowed in a drawer

And you wore the softest of blues

Which tugged out your eyes

That sparkled and shone

For him. And all of us.

And you stood firm

And proud and strong

As you ran a business

And bore six children.

And stood stalwart

Like an icon for the

Rest of us girls

In our endless family.

And after all that you played

Bridge and golf

Up to your nineties

And shone some more

Like a beacon for the old.

With your nails always painted

And hair just so

And your clothes so glamourous.

And then, the bottom fell out.

Your youngest died his neverending

Death from cancer. And overnight

Your mind snapped shut.

And I saw the shell last week

Of what you had become.

Your smile intact, his name deleted.

From your thoughts, your life.

Only the names of those others

Long dead and gone, are now alive.

Your mother, my mother

Your husband, your father.

I miss you.

A scent of laundry. Part 2.

See Part 1 here.

She was there for a little party business I started to supplement my low female wages in Cork back in the day, when she invited all her well to do friends to her house so I could sell them a record amount of Tupperware.

She was there for my wedding, making all the bridesmaids’ dresses including fittings and arranging for shoe dyeing and matching hair bands.

She was there when my baby was born, making ridiculously fancy and gorgeous velvet dresses with lacy collars in every colour imaginable.

She was there to hold my precious mother, her sister, as she went through horrific chemo treatments and multiple amputations.

She was there but not so much when I would visit her after my mother’s death.

She was very much less there at my sister’s wedding. She kept disappearing to the ladies’ room and when she was at our table, she was oddly incoherent and inappropriately cynical.

I noticed a strange vinegary odour coming from her any time I would meet her when I went back home. I could not engage with her like in the old days. She had a remarkable lack of interest in my life and she forbade me to mention my mother’s name.

One night, when I asked my cousin, her daughter, what was going on, she silently gave me a tour of the house that had been the scene of so much laughter, community, and feasts fit for a queen.

Her dressing table, her pride and joy, laden with Waterford Crystal perfume bottles and handcut face cream jars, was the first stop. Each and every container was full of vodka.

The toilet tanks, the hot presses under the towels, the back recesses of the sideboard, even the opened yawning mouth of the piano: every nook and cranny held a bottle or a mickey full of alcohol.

Later, I sat down with her beautiful teenage granddaughter at a party in a cousin’s house and described her grandmother’s heyday to her. She looked at me blankly, almost disbelievingly.

“I’ve never known her to be anything but like she is now,’ she said softly.

Blog Jam from New Brunswick

An almost forgotten province in the overall scheme of Canada, New Brunswick is full of forest, so much so that three hours driving through the green solidity of trees upon trees has never failed but to have me pull over to the side of the highway, almost in a coma and doze off, head back, drooling I'm sure, for about half an hour. I nearly made it all the way through today, I'd about fifteen minutes to go but my head started to nod. I scrabbled myself and the car off under a tree's comforting shadow before any harm could be done. The somnolent effect of hundreds of miles of trees has to be witnessed to be believed and I have driven this road close to fifty times in the last thirty years and never managed to make it through in one swoop.

New Brunswick also has the world's longest covered bridge,(sorry Madison County) photo above.

On another note: my dear aunt Frances was buried today and a brother gave me a full report. She wished to be buried in the family plot with her mother, my father and my mother and her sister. However, the family plot is full to capacity and there were a few options, two of which would have upset my aunt. One was to cremate her and bury the ashes in the grave. As she was a Catholic of the very old school this was out of the question. The second was to try and determine if one of the other graves around had a spare apartment. But being buried with strangers would have appalled her.

The third was to build a 'penthouse' (my brother's word, not mine!) above the family plot and ensconce her, queen of all she surveyed. This was the most expensive option but as her will had been very specific regarding her eternal location, it was decided to do just that and honour her. I was very pleased and rather tickled at the idea of her, a very humble woman, rising above all those beneath her. RIP, dearest aunt, from your mouth to your God's ear. Save us from peril and from woe.

PS I wonder does the PH have its own little elevator and fireplace?

PPS Full report in September of the penthouse gravesite.

Blog Jam from Quebec

or from "La Belle Province" as les Quebecois call it. Not seeing much of the belle as floods have taken over fields and roads. Quite the sight to see cars driving on raised sideroads surrounded by trees and hydro poles several feet deep in water. My camera ran out of juice, much to my dismay, but tomorrow I hope to record some New Brunswick sights.
I went down to Grosse Ile, however (picture above) and stood at the shore looking out at the island. There wasn't another human in sight, much less a ferry to take me out to the island in the middle of the St. Lawrence so I could walk around the hallowed (and now declared a Heritage Site in 1984) land of the Irish who arrived and died there in the dreadful Famine Years of the 1840's.
Surely one of these years a magical boat will emerge out of the mist to ferry me over. I walked through an entire hotel nearby, every door was open to the wind and the river, but ne'er a body to be found. Much trust though, I could have taken the keys to their van, their entire bar stock and some lovely desserts in a glass case.

On a sadder note, I learned that my last surviving aunt on my father's side died this morning. She was just shy of her 99th birthday. The loss has hit me more deeply than I ever would have suspected. I tend to freeze and process for quite some length of time when I hear bad news. It simply takes a while to percolate through. It hit me later in the afternoon and now I have a blinding headache from my grief.
Auntie Francie was a woman who was refused admission as a postulant to the local convent when she was a teenager because an older sister had the audacity to marry the protestant minister of the town and had been denounced by the parish priest from the pulpit for doing so.
Rather than making her bitter, it propelled her into a life, not of her choosing, but of necessity - a life of service to a Great House in the town in which she lived.
The Lord and Lady were very kind to her and I never heard her speak a bad word about them. She cooked and occasionally filled in as a sort of nanny in waiting to the regular nanny. She was full of stories of the lives of these people when she visited. A real-life "Upstairs, Downstairs" if you will, told with charm and enthusiasm. She never ran out of stories and I am glad that my daughter and granddaughter had the fortune to visit with her on a few occasions.
She retired at fifty five and the convent that had rejected her now asked her to take care of their accounting books and banking which she did until she was ninety. Tragically, while she was at Mass one morning a couple of punks/louts broke into her small cottage and damaged it and took her pension money. This scared her so badly she refused to live there anymore so wound up in a rather awful old folks' home in the town where there were no private rooms, just large wards with everything shared. That is where I had seen her last and she was, heart-breakingly, most unhappy but she always cheered up when rellies arrived.
I had looked forward to seeing her again this September, now sadly, not to be.
Sleep with the angels, beloved aunt.