Lost in 2018 - A Friend

We're both short, but Penny was tiny and slender whereas I am quite a bit more well-rounded.  When we went out to eat, I would finish my plate and she would take a few bites and offer me the leftovers.  Sort of an odd couple.  Initially we had reading in common, political and mystery, mostly.  I don't think of her as gregarious, but she was welcoming, whereas I make friends cautiously.  She is the reason I know pretty nearly all the the women I know and love here in Charleston.

She loved learning, as do I, but in really different ways.  She tried to nudge me into taking college courses with her and reading beyond my mystery-escape-fiction tendencies.  She got her doctorate in I'll say some kind of chemistry when she was in her sixties and was deservedly proud of it.  After that she began to learn Pashto, and got so involved in the history and culture of Afghanistan that she spent a year there teaching.  Then she had a book published about her experiences there.

Whereas I took beach vacations in Florida, and I began to play tennis again.

Penny was my closest friend for a dozen years or so.  She was my support system, and for someone like me who can be insecure and at times thin-skinned, I never EVER felt judged by her.  As I sit here, I remember her cynical half-grin, sitting at Seanachie with her bottle of beer or glass of pinot grigio, sometimes sharing but mostly listening.  Because she was the only drinking buddy I have had since college.

We got together almost like clockwork, every two or three weeks, for drinks and often dinner, although the dinner part appealed to me more than to Penny.  She told me she had no sense of smell and that was why food had little attraction for her.  Ironically, she liked to cook and talk about food, and try new things -- more so than I did.  She would sometimes find a food at a restaurant that she liked so much she would go back over and over again until she suddenly tired of it and never wanted to go there again.  If she had a meal she didn't like the first time she went to a restaurant, it was likely she would refuse to go there ever again, despite reviews and raves from friends.

Penny was comfortable meeting and getting to know people of all kinds in all settings.  She enjoyed sitting at a bar and casually chatting with people she didn't know.  When she made what we all considered a disastrous move from the lively Folly Beach to isolated rural Meggett, she found the one bar, where possibly no liberal had ever set foot, and became a regular.  She told hilarious stories about debates at the bar, not unlike the crew at Donald E. Westlake's fictional O.J. Bar and Grill, where John Dortmunder and his unlikely gang of thieves met to plan their heists.  I bugged her to put the stories in writing, but sadly, she did not.  We worried about her safety, but apparently she held her own.

I, on the other hand, will go into a restaurant or bar and hide behind a book until my food came, or my friend showed up.

I could tell Penny anything.  Anything.  Over the years, she opened up to me about her life, although rarely about her health, which was a source of frustration and sadness as her problems worsened.  We talked about our families, each extraordinarily dysfunctional in their own special ways, as dysfunctional families tend to be.

She was the person I could share anything with.  I write that with amazement.  One time over drinks I told her the worst thing I ever did, a secret that had been skulking in my mind for decades.  I don't remember what she said, but what she conveyed wasn't "no big deal" anymore than "wow - you did that?"  It was more like "okay, that happened."  And with that, I was able to move on.

Penny could certainly register a criticism.  She complained about me putting up with my long-distance husband when he had his fits of rage, and couldn't comprehend that from a distance he was my best friend.  When I agonized over my relationship with my daughter -- before I knew her son -- she told me I was too involved, again, with the cynical half-grin.  And then I saw her with her son, whom she totally doted on.  And worried about at least as passionately as I worried about my daughter.

As easy as it was for Penny to talk to others, she was a private person.  There were places she would not go with you.  She only openly admitted her age to me months before she died.  Her health problems were completely off limits.  And she absolutely hated when people tried to take pictures of her.

That tiny woman could terrify people.  You DID NOT want to refer to her as Miss, Mrs., or certainly, "hon."  She quickly and in no uncertain terms informed the individual, whether it was a server at a restaurant or a doctor's receptionist, that "I am NOT 'hon'; I am Doctor Travis."  While I cringed for the poor young man or woman taking our order, I was proud of her for insisting that others know she had status.

She never terrified me, because despite her sharp tongue, she was extraordinarily gentle.  She worried over hurting people's feelings, for example, when our little lunch group was bursting its seams and she had to let people know not to invite all their friends.  She was gentle with me.  And there whenever I needed her.

And so, as I was losing her to whatever poorly defined illnesses were incapacitating her, I was aware that I was losing my best friend.  She died one short month after my sister, in August.  I had lunched with her when I came home from the funeral, told her the sad stories and the funny ones.  She wasn't feeling very good, and barely touched her food.  She had pretty much stopped drinking, which was even sadder to watch, because she enjoyed her glass of wine and wouldn't have considered a meal without one.

But she still listened.

In very different ways, losing my sister (two years younger than me) and my closest friend (ten years older) has shaken me where I am most mortal.  I have learned over my life not to get too close, not to share too much, not to be too vulnerable.  I imagine I will not have another close friendship.  I am amazed that I was lucky enough to have this one, that grew so easily over the years.

By the way, she would have killed me if she knew I had taken this picture.  It turns out it was a risk worth taking.

Lost in 2018 - Sisters

Nobody expected my sister Jennie to die last summer, and yet we all knew that her precarious health made it likely that she could go anytime.  After my husband died in 2014, she was the person I could call if I needed to hear a voice, and cautiously talk about my frustrations.  I mostly enjoyed telling her stories that made her laugh.

Jennie was two years younger than me.  She was the comedian; I was smart and looked as though I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders.  She was pretty and knew how to dance.  I persisted in learning the steps but always felt I looked like I was lumbering.  She was slender and a little bit fragile looking, while I was chubby from the time I was born.

Over our teen years, Jennie was witness to fights between me and my father that were sometimes violent, and to periods of months in which he and I did not speak to each other.

To be fair, not speaking was my father's modus operandi, I just learned it from him.  And so did Jennie.  When he died, it was inevitable that she would find me at such great fault that she broke off with me completely.  My children were four and seven when he died, and it did not take too long before they had lost their aunt, who had been crazy about them.

Underneath it all, I blamed myself, because I knew everybody else did, and because it hurt my kids.  But over the years I tried to open up the lines with pictures and short notes.  It took her fifteen years to feel ready to reconcile, and it so happened she responded to my letter asking to get together just as my youngest was heading to Harvard.  I remember being shocked at how much older they both were, as I'm sure they were toward me, but we talked and laughed during dinner as though those fifteen years and bad feelings had never happened.

She, and my youngest sister Patricia, missed my kids childhoods, and they missed having their two aunts.  How ironic and sad that Jennie was only able to reconcile as my youngest was leaving the nest.

And now the burdens of Jennie's death have repeated the process with Patricia.  I understood that her loss would be greater than mine, because they had been close all these years.  I supported her in her decisions, kept my hurt over some financial decisions to myself as best I could, and only once offered a firm opinion, on property that had been in my family since somewhere around 1900.  That was the opening for Patricia to cut me off.

I am glad that my children are working to keep up their relationship with Patricia, that I did not pass on that nonsense about not speaking whenever there is a difference.  But when they walked outside to make the Christmas phone call, excluding me because Patricia would not want to talk to me, it pained me.  Part of me wished they would defend me, they would be angry at her for hurting me.  My mother died so many years ago, and it seems that in my life, in my family, she is the only person who defended me when I was wronged.  Not my husband, not my father, not either of my sisters, and not my children.

It would be nice if I did not feel hurt, but I am trying to feel hurt rather than anger.  Anger has worked too much disease into my family of origin, and I am so, so proud that my children don't harbor resentments the way I was taught and had to work so hard to unlearn.

But the fact is, I am reeling from Patricia's decision to cut me off.  This after my last visit with her, when I felt closer to her than I had ever felt.  As we shared letters, pictures and memories, we laughed and cried together.  She told me about how she had felt all those years ago that she couldn't talk to me if Jennie wasn't talking to me or risk her wrath, and about how she did not understand what circumstances caused Jennie to finally be ready to reconcile.  And yet, here we are, as she repeats that sad history.

And Jennie.  She was once a bright and happy girl, who became an insecure and troubled woman.  Her friends loved her for her humor and her passion.  But she distrusted so many others, and to them she wrapped herself in a cold shell.  And I was one of those for so many years.

We were never able to talk about our childhood, except for a handful of superficial stories, even in the last nine years we had together.  Too many landmines.  Another tragedy because there was so much I wanted to talk to her about.  I wanted to hear and see what she lived through in our stormy house, and maybe uncover some warm memories that I had buried under the turmoil.

But what we had over the past years was pretty good.  I could call her anytime.  When my daughter and I had a rough patch, she listened.  On those weekend days when I had spent just a few too many days alone, I knew I could call her, and we could laugh a bit.  My daughter just told me that during the four hour flight home after the holidays, my grandbaby pooped three times, requiring three highly odorous walks through the plane to the restroom.  I want to call Jennie and tell her about it, so I can hear her laugh.

I know now that Jennie lived with a troubled heart, but would not share it with me.  She died alone, but after a day in the sun, just where she wanted to be.

She was my first good-bye in 2018.