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Published 2/13/03 in The Post-Star COMMENTARY You never really let go By STACEY MORRIS It wasn't the season for back porch weather, but my cousins and I sat there anyway, that afternoon in late winter three years ago, on the porch where Aunt Mary fed her birds and hung laundry from the clothes line. Inside the house was the after-funeral buffet, the homemade salads and casseroles that she would have loved -- that she would have made if this had been a funeral taking place a year ago. I was no longer able to stand the strangeness of mingling with friends and family in Aunt Mary's house without her, so I took a seat on the milk crate as my cousin Neils stood across from me, leaning against the porch railing. There was an important reason, he said, that we were making our way through the rituals of church services and graveside ceremonies, a reason beyond the obvious fact of paying respects to the departed. "It's all part of letting go," said Neils, with the standard matter-of-factness of the left-brained scientist that he is. As his ultra right-brained, cry-hysterically-at-Bambi cousin, I bristled. Let go? Never. How could he be serious? I would never stop missing Aunt Mary. Or wanting her back. It's a cloudy memory, but it's still there: Aunt Mary standing in her kitchen, smiling with her arms outstretched as I run toward her, probably before I could speak in complete sentences. My arms are stretching up toward hers and she's wearing a dress that's pink. I called her "aunt," but it was a relationship that fell into different emotional categories: Aunt Mary the grandmother, cooking a 22-pound turkey to perfection every Christmas dinner; Aunt Mary the mother, who understood my tears when everyone else dismissed me as too sensitive. In adulthood, she became Aunt Mary the friend. We spoke on the phone every day, even if it was just to make a few caustic remarks about the bad writing on "Days of Our Lives." Summers were the best. We'd spend long afternoons on her dock, catching up on stacks of magazines we'd haul down to the beach in the car. Sometimes we'd get into deep discussions on family history, or feed ducks as they paddled by. Or if we were feeling exceptionally relaxed, we'd just doze in the sun. It was a bond cemented 35 years ago, when she stood, as Aunt Mary the RN in a delivery room at Glens Falls Hospital, helping my mother bring me into the world. Given her ability for taking charge of a situation, hers was probably the first voice I heard in that delivery room. The diagnosis of pancreatic cancer 3-1/2 years ago shattered everyone in the family, as well as her huge network of friends. Her terminal condition was made official with the ballpark figure from the doctor of six months. I didn't know it at the time, but they were six months that would give us all a head start in letting go. That last summer, Aunt Mary and I spent as much time as we could on the dock, squeezing every last moment out of the longer days. She started going through boxes of old photos and passing them out when extended family visited. And there were the changes in her that kept reminding us all in no uncertain terms that it would soon be time to let go. She was rapidly losing weight and lying down more and more. The pain medication would often cause her to drift off to sleep during dinner. Pain or not, there were certain things Aunt Mary refused to give up, like making trays of cookies, breads and dinner rolls at Christmas. And she insisted that Christmas Eve, like always, she would deliver them to area women who were widowed and alone on Christmas. One of the ladies was so excited to be getting a delivery, she didn't notice Aunt Mary nodding off as she handed her the plate of cookies. Aunt Mary sent me home that Christmas Eve with a Ziploc bag filled with her cloud-like dinner rolls. But they never saw the inside of my oven. Instead, I squirreled them away in the freezer -- a tangible reminder that I would keep for as long as I wanted. I knew I wouldn't keep them stashed away forever. My plan was always to put them to some sort of charitable use. On Tuesday morning, I opened the freezer and saw that Aunt Mary's dinner rolls were becoming smothered in frost. And I knew that hanging on to physical reminders can only go so far and for so long. So on Tuesday, the third anniversary of Aunt Mary's death, I traveled to three different parks, in search of ducks. Ponds at the first two parks were frozen solid -- not a bird in sight. But the third pond showed promise. It was also frozen. But off in the distance was a small patch of open water, and ducks were gliding back and forth across the surface. Stepping out of the car, I reached into the Ziploc bag and realized something about the past three years without Aunt Mary -- I've come through it -- and that's more than I thought I was capable of four years ago. Sometimes it still hurts when I see her smiling at me with outstretched arms, and maybe I'll never completely let go. But in that moment when I saw the ducks rising out of the water as I threw the last of Aunt Mary's dinner rolls onto the frozen snowbank, I knew I was closer than I had ever been. |